The Summer of Katya

“No, not actually. But I have testimony of its existence from a perfectly impeccable source.” I could not comprehend Katya’s frown and slight shake of her head.

Paul set the stick of wood down deliberately and rose to face me. “You don’t mind if we don’t take coffee this evening, do you, Doctor? My poor battered shoulder is giving me pain, so I think I’ll make an early night of it.”

“Nonsense,” Katya said. “Of course we shall take coffee. You, however, may go to your room if you must.”

“No, no, no,” Paul said. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving and running the risk of missing Father’s insights into the climactic frailty of Man or Dr. Montjean’s invaluable metaphysical footnotes. I have the rounding out of my education to consider. By the way, ‘invaluable’ is the opposite of ‘valuable,’ isn’t it?”

“Someone mentioned ghosts and spirits just now,” Monsieur Treville said, accepting his coffee and brandy from Katya with a negligent smile of thanks. “I’ve always been fascinated by the role played by the supernatural in the life of medieval man. Of course, Doctor, you are familiar with Louis Duvivier’s work on the subject, in which he presents the attractive, if rather weakly substantiated, contention that Christianity maintained its sway over the half-barbaric minds of the….”

….Half an hour later, Katya interrupted her father’s involute monologue by kissing him on the forehead and saying that she should be off to bed. I rose and took her offered hand.

“Will we see you tomorrow for tea, Jean-Marc?”

“Yes, of course. Good-night, Katya.”

“Good-night. Are you coming up, Paul?”

“As soon as I’ve seen our guest off.” Paul’s speech was slightly slurred in result of his excessive recourse to the brandy.

As Katya left the salon, Monsieur Treville pulled out his watch and said, “My goodness! How the evening has slipped by! And I have work I promised myself to finish before tomorrow. Still, it was an intriguing conversation. I must confess that I am addicted to the give and take of intelligent conversation. It’s fast becoming a lost art. Well, then! If you will excuse me?” And he left.

I remained standing, prepared to be on my way, but Paul didn’t rise from his chair. Instead, he hooked his leg over the arm and waved towards the brandy bottle. “Will you have another glass before you go?”

“I think not, thank you. Why do you laugh?”

“It’s just that you look so damned silly in my smoking jacket. I suppose I would look ridiculous if I were dressed up as a Basque shepherd. It’s a matter of what one is born to, I shouldn’t wonder.”

I had quite forgotten that I was wearing his jacket, and I took it off to exchange it for my own, which was hanging near the fire to dry out.

“You are Basque, aren’t you?” Paul pursued.

“Yes, I am. My natal village isn’t far from here up in the mountains. Why do you ask?”

“Just idle curiosity. Montjean isn’t a Basque name, after all. One expects names like Utuburu, or Zabola, or Elizondo… something darkly passionate like that.”

Actually, my name is Basque… a Frenchification of the stems mendi and jaun, meaning ‘mountain man.’ But I cannot bring myself to believe that you’re really interested in the sources of my name.”

“Fascinated beyond description, old fellow,” he said in his laziest drawl. “But there is something I would like to talk to you about. You’re sure you won’t accept a last brandy?”

“Very well, if you wish.”

“There’s my gracious friend.” But he did not pour it out; instead, he waved towards the bottle and left me to serve myself. “I’ve been reconsidering the matter of allowing you to visit Katya.”

“Oh? Have you?”

“Hm-m. Yes.”

“I wasn’t aware that your sister required your permission to entertain guests.”

He laughed. “Did you notice your tone of voice? That could have been me speaking. Do you think you’ve caught something from my jacket?”

“What possible objection could you have to my passing an hour or two each afternoon with Katya?”

“Ah yes, I’ve noticed that you and she have begun using first names.”

“There’s nothing to that. We talk together a good deal. It would be stilted for us to avoid Christian names.”

“Yes, I suppose so. You asked what objection I could have to your passing an hour or two each day with her in what is probably trivial and surely tedious conversation. Nothing in the world, old boy. But you are young and might be considered attractive by some; and she is young and attractive to all; and it is in the nature of things that they lead to other things.”

“I find your implication offensive.”

“Please don’t play the outraged Gascon with me. What a bore d’Artagnan must have been, always so sensitive of his imagined honor.”

“I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“What an observant fellow you are! Look, I’m not accusing you and Katya of anything. But you’re both healthy people, and romantics. God gave Adam and Eve the run of the garden, and the next thing you know they’re swapping apples. It’s perfectly natural.” He rose and crossed the room to me. “But I don’t care how natural it is, I don’t want you and Katya swapping apples. Not even nibbles of apples. Is that understood?”

I rose. “I think I should leave.”

“What a wonderful idea. But I suppose you only meant that you should leave for tonight and that you’ll be back, bad-penny-like, at tea time tomorrow.”

I didn’t answer him. I was too angry, and I didn’t trust myself not to hit him. But he followed me to the door.

“Tell me, Montjean. Have you kissed my sister?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I have not.”

“Not even held her hand?”

“Not even that,” I lied. “No nibbles at all. Now allow me to wish you a good night.”

“Just a moment! Listen to me. I want your absolute promise that you will not attempt the slightest intimacy with my sister. Do I have it?”

“Frankly, Treville, I consider your overly protective attitude towards Katya to be unhealthy.”

“Of course it’s unhealthy. We’re an unhealthy family. Didn’t Katya tell you we were down in this forsaken hole for our health. But the state of my family’s health has nothing to do with the promise I demand from you. Well?”

I could feel the Basque blood pounding at my temples. When I spoke, I kept my voice very quiet and very controlled. “If you were not Katya’s brother, I would knock you on your butt.”

“My, my. What a master of repartee! Wouldn’t it be a bit difficult for you to smash your fist into a face so identical to hers?”

My eyes flicked from one of his to the other. Then my shoulders slumped. He was absolutely right. It would have been impossible.

“It’s a good thing you have reconsidered, because if you had so much as made an angry gesture, I would have had the pleasure of punishing you, severely and adroitly. I have not had occasion to tell you that I was a champion kick-boxer in Paris. Not that I enjoyed all the sweat and grunting of athletics, but there was a period when it was fashionable for young men of my class to be proficient at kick-boxing. Allowed one to deal with street ruffians without soiling one’s gloves, you see. So naturally I became remarkably proficient.”

“Oh, naturally.” I drew a calming breath, then bowed curtly. “Good-night.” It was only with the exercise of restraint that I was able to close the door gently behind me.

* * *

Considering the content and timbre of our conversation the night before, I was quite surprised when, just as I was finishing my duties at the clinic the next afternoon, Paul appeared at my office door.

“May I come in?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

He explained that he had just finished some business in Salies and would be delighted to offer me a ride to Etcheverria, on the condition that I accept his invitation to take supper with them again.

I measured him charily for a moment, before saying that nothing would please me more. He responded that he couldn’t understand anyone who took pleasure in the local food, save for excessively devout persons who exposed themselves to the swill as a form of mortification of the flesh in the hope of shortening their time in purgatory.

We had no sooner settled into his surry then he said, “I’m afraid I might have drunk a bit too much last night.”

“Oh? Do you think so?”

“I’m not very good at making apologies… lack of practice, I suppose.”

“I had the impression you were good at everything—kick-boxing, insulting guests, impugning the actions of your sister—all the social graces.”

He laughed. “You’ve been saving that one up for me, haven’t you?”

I almost smiled. In fact, I had been rehearsing what I would say to him the next time we met.

We passed out of town and rode for a time in silence along the road to Etcheverria before he turned to me and said, “Look, Montjean. I am aware that Katya takes pleasure in your company. And it’s good for Father to have someone to listen to his interminable monologues. I love them both, and I couldn’t deny them this slight relief from the eternal boredom of this place. But I must insist on your promise that you will not engage in even the slightest intimacies with Katya—” I drew a breath to answer him, but he raised a hand, “—however innocent! However innocent. I don’t doubt your motives, Montjean. It’s just that my father… well, I’ve told you that my father must not suspect that you have the slightest interest in her. Don’t ask me for an explanation. It’s none of your affair.”

I sighed and shook my head. “Last night you were all acid and hate; this afternoon you’re all reason and friendliness. I must tell you that I consider your mercurial disposition most childish.”

He grinned at me. “Do you think so? Very well, I accept your diagnosis—under the condition that we drop the subject right now.”

During the rest of the ride, Paul entertained me with imitations of local merchants and dignitaries he had dealt with in Salies, and he displayed a capacity for scathing caricature that was surprising, together with a lack of sympathy for human foible that was not surprising at all.

“It’s a wonder you deal with merchants,” I said, “considering your contempt for them as a class.”

“One has no choice but to come into contact with them from time to time, old boy. After all, they own the world; not through right of birth or personal gifts, to be sure. They own the world because they bought it.”

“That may be true. But you must remember, it was your class that sold it to them.”

He was silent for a time, then he said quietly, “That’s true. How true.”

* * *

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.”