The Summer of Katya (8 page)

“I shall look forward to it, Mlle Treville,” I said, my eyes full of her.

“So shall I.”

After she left, Monsieur Treville settled back in his chair as though for a good long talk and asked me how long I had been devoted to the study of the Black Death….

….An hour later, when finally Paul was seeing me to the door, the rain had lightened to a frying hiss on the gravel outside. He had not been sparing of the brandy, and there was something beyond nonchalance in the way he leaned against the archway of the hall door.

“You’ve done well, Montjean. I am sure Father hasn’t the slightest hint that your interest in us is not solely medical. That bespeaks an admirable streak of duplicity in your nature. You really should cultivate this gift, not only as a means of surviving in a world of rogues and merchants, but as leavening in a personality that is altogether too serious and sincere to be interesting.”

“Are you always this uncivil, Treville?”

“Not always. You bring out the best in me.”

“I’m delighted to be of service. May I wish you a goodnight?”

“Please do.”

* * *

Before the trap had reached the end of the poplar lane, the rain stopped, and as the mare walked comfortably back to Salies through the night air rinsed clean of dust, I troubled over several events of the evening. There was that strange, tense conversation I had overheard between Katya and Paul. And there was Paul’s warning that his father must know nothing of my interest in Katya while, so far as I could judge, the old man was a gentle pedant with no harm in him. Perhaps most troubling of all was the fact that I rather liked Paul Treville, although I had every reason not to. Was it his physical resemblance to Katya that drew me to forgive his adolescent discourteousness? I didn’t think so. Not that alone, anyway. There was a kind of desperate melancholy in the man, not quite concealed by his waspish wit, that made me sympathize with a person of lucid if brittle intelligence who had no outlet for his energies and mind in our rural corner of the Basque country.

Why did he accept this self-imposed isolation from the world he was born to, the world in which his gifts and talents were valued? Why, indeed, were the Trevilles living in an ancient heap of stone so far from their Paris? Katya had made an allusion to their being here for their health, but I could see no evidence of ill-health, and I could see every evidence, in Monsieur Treville’s eagerness to share ideas and concepts with me, of a hunger for the civilized society they had left.

In a selfish way, of course, I was delighted that they were here in Salies. How else would I ever have met Katya?

Katya… And the rest of my ride into town was occupied with fabricating little scenes and swatches of dialogue between Katya and me.

* * *

Directly the clinic closed at three the next afternoon, I borrowed Doctor Gros’s trap again and rode out to Etcheverria, arriving in time for tea, which was taken on the terrace overlooking the derelict garden. Paul’s attitude had changed totally; he was full of light chat and jokes that had no trace of vitriol in them. And when Monsieur Treville joined us from his study, Paul asked him about his work with every evidence of genuine interest and concern, which was a far cry from the tone of impish baiting that had colored his conversation the night before.

At first, Monsieur Treville seemed confused to see me at their tea table, and there was an uncomfortable moment when I was afraid he didn’t recognize me and hadn’t the slightest idea who I was. But Katya used my title several times until, with a little start of comprehension, her father said, “Ah, yes! You’re the fellow who’s deeply involved in studies of the Black Death, aren’t you? Yes. Fascinating subject. Fascinating.”

Paul excused himself after only one cup of the thin tisane Katya served, claiming that there were a thousand things demanding his attention, so he had best take a little nap and give them a chance to solve themselves under the influence of his benign neglect. Monsieur Treville rose and pled the demands of scholarship, shaking my hand in farewell and cautioning me not to devote myself overly much to my study of medieval medicine, as I was a young man and must not allow life to pass me by.

Katya smiled after her departing father and shook her head affectionately. “He likes you, Jean-Marc Montjean.”

“I like him, too.”

She looked at me, her grey eyes soft and smiling. “Yes, I know. And that pleases me. But you may have to bone up a little on things medieval.”

“I shall make it my constant study.”

She laughed lightly and rose. “Shall we stroll down to my library?”

“You speak of the library that disguises itself so cleverly as a half-ruined summerhouse?”

“What other library have I? Come along.”

And for the better part of two hours we chatted, she sitting in the battered wicker chair that was the gazebo’s only furnishing or perched upon the balustrade rail, while I sat on the steps or leaned against the frame of the latticed arch entrance. Our conversation ranged freely, shallow and deep, now and ago, serious and light-hearted, personal and global, the topic pivoting on a word or branching off in a new direction under the impulse of a non sequitur image or idea that appeared in one of our minds or the other. Time acted in a most paradoxical way: on the one hand, it was suspended and frozen, on the other it fled like water through our fingers.

I accepted her invitation to return for tea the next day, when again we chatted about everything and nothing. And so it was the following day, and the day after that. In my memory, all the hours we passed in the summerhouse blend together as a prolonged, but all-too-brief, time spent sitting in the dappled light, concealed in the overgrown garden, while above the trees the sky was always an ardent blue and the air was always cool and gently moving in the perfect weather of that July.

We came to using first names. We came to sharing long silences without that sense of social embarrassment that strangers have. I fell into the habit of groaning at her puns, even though some of them were admirable tricks of sound and sense requiring a considerable exercise of literary or political allusion. She came to teasing me for being typically Basque in my unlikely combination of dour earnestness and theatrical romanticism.

I was particularly fascinated by an ambivalence of mood that was so especially Katya’s. Most of the time, she was vividly alive and alert to everything around her: she pointed out birds in branches that I could not discover even when she directed my gaze to the spot; she took pleasure in the close examination of the form and structure of the petals and leaves of such flowers as had survived the long neglect the garden had suffered; she delighted in the feel of the sun on her face and the smell of the heated summer air; she loved to play with words and ideas, twisting and re-forming them with her particular sense of the ridiculous. But at other moments—rather rarely—she would suddenly retire within herself, sometimes in midsentence, and I could tell from the vague and distant look in her eyes that she was elsewhere, not in this garden, not in this world… not with me. She would gaze in silence across the garden, alone and serene in her thoughts, then there would be a slight flicker in her eyes and she would glance at me, and I knew she had returned from her reverie.

She would joke about it, saying something like, “Well, I’m back. Were there any letters for me while I was away?”

And I would say something like, “No, but there was a telegram from your brother. It seems his grandson is getting married next month.”

“Oh, really?” she would laugh. “Have I been gone all that long?”

“Very long. Nearly a minute. And very far away. Nearly beyond my reach.”

Fragments of the things we talked about during those delicious afternoon hours return to me even now, fresh and whole, like those snatches of melody from one’s youth that slip back unsolicited from the hidden reaches of the memory. Often we exchanged moments and incidents from our childhoods, shards of ourselves shared unselfconsciously, and not so much shared as remembered aloud. She recalled that she was once given a blue silk dress with a bow that she loved so much she saved it for some very special occasion, saved it so long that when she at last found a sufficiently worthy event, it was too small to be worn. She had wept bitterly. But she kept the dress and had it even now. And I told her of a bully in my mountain village who enjoyed taunting me because I did particularly well in school. He took up the practice of slapping me on the back of my head, which expression of subtle wit delighted the other children. I used to cry with rage and shame, but I never dared to challenge the bigger lad until my wise old uncle took me aside and explained that, while the bully was strong, I had the advantage of being quick and adroit. And, what is more, I would be strengthened by the rightness of my cause. So, the next time that fat butcher’s son hectored me, I put up my fists and took a stand… only to experience the soundest thrashing of my life, with my nose bloodied and my lip broken. And when I reported the event to my uncle, he shook his head and advised me not to be so stupid in future as to pick fights with bigger boys. And she told me of the shadow of a tree branch at night on the wall of her bedroom that looked like a monkey and used to frighten her each time a storm made it dance, rippling insanely over the draperies. She would hide under her covers and peek out through a little hole, fascinated, horrified, but unable to look away from the dancing monkey because she had convinced herself that it could not harm her so long as she kept her eyes on it. She dared not even blink. And I told her of the one time I cheated in school and…

There is no purpose in recounting everything we shared. I am sure the reader has been in love, and remembers.

There was no physical intimacy between us, to be sure. We didn’t kiss; I didn’t even hold her hand. Our only contact was when she slipped her hand into the crook of my arm as we walked down to the summerhouse or back from it. But even now, years later, I can still feel the pressure and warmth of that hand, as though my nerves had memories independent of my mind.

There was one occasion when she did touch me, come to think of it. We were chatting when she suddenly put her hand upon mine and hushed me with a gesture.

“What is it?” I asked.

She remained perfectly still for a long moment, looking to the side of the summerhouse with close attention. Then she looked back to me and smiled. “You didn’t see her?”

“Her? Who?”

She evaluated me quizzically, as though wondering if I were trying to trick her. Then she shrugged, “Oh, never mind. It’s nothing.”

“No, tell me.” Then a thought crossed my mind. “You didn’t see the ghost that’s supposed to haunt this garden, did you? Is that it?”

“She’s not a ghost.”

“Oh, yes. I forgot. Spirit, then.”

Katya gazed at me for a moment; then she shook her head and smiled. “I really must be getting back to the house. The local girl working for us requires reminding, or she would never start supper, and poor Father would have to go to bed hungry.”

“Stay with me a little longer. Send the ghost to remind her. It’s an experience she’ll never forget.”

“I won’t have you joke about the spirit… poor thing. Now you go along. But if you wish, you may join us for dinner tonight. Father has asked after you.”

“I accept with pleasure.”

Before we parted on the terrace, I remembered that I had forgotten to give her that day’s pebble. It had become a joke—and a little more than a joke—between us for me to present her with a pebble upon each meeting. I found it in my pocket and offered it with the comically sober ceremony we had fallen into.

“Thank you very much, Jean-Marc. It’s the finest pebble I’ve received since… oh, I can’t remember when. Yesterday, I think.”

“I’ll see you this evening, then?”

“Yes. Until then.”

* * *

It rained that evening, and once again I arrived with dripping hair and sodden jacket. During dinner there were the expected jokes about my bringing the rain with me whenever I visited. I felt a bit uncomfortable at the table, because Katya, fearful that I would catch a cold in my wet coat, had insisted that I change it for one of Paul’s brocade smoking jackets, which was a little too small for me and a great deal fancier than anything I was used to wearing.

Paul squinted at me across the table. “I wonder, Montjean, if I look that silly in my smoking jacket. Or are you one of those rare fellows who can diminish the effect of any garment he wears?”

“I think he looks charming,” Katya said.

“Do you indeed?”

I had been aware of a regular erosion of graciousness on Paul’s part since that first tea, when he had been surprisingly pleasant. His principal method of letting me know that he was not totally pleased to see me every day at the tea table was an affected surprise, followed by a declaration that he was delighted to see me there again—or was it still?

After a longish silence, during which he had been lost in his thoughts, Monsieur Treville leaned forward and said, “You know, I have been thinking about your having to change your coat to protect your health, Dr…. ah… Doctor.”

“Have you really?” Paul said. “How fascinating.”

“Yes. Man is so fragile! It’s almost frightening to contemplate. We live in a universe in which the constant temperature is nearly absolute zero. No life could survive in the millions of miles that separate the specks of light we call stars. And that space makes up the overwhelming majority of the universe. Nor could any life as we know it exist in the thousands of degrees of heat on the stars. Life—all of life—is restricted to the insignificant little particles of dust revolving about the stars… these planets. And most of them are either too hot or too cold for the survival of man. In the thousands of degrees that separate the cauldrons of the stars and the lifeless cold of space, Man can survive in only the narrowest conceivable band of temperature—only a few degrees. Indeed, without shelter and heat, we can survive in only a few places on our own miniature planet. Men die of heat prostration at thirty-five degrees, and of exposure at minus twenty-five. And even within those strict limits, we can catch cold and perish of pneumonia by getting a little damp, even during the finest summer in memory. It’s both frightening and wonderful to consider how precarious our existence is and how the slightest change in our lives can snuff us out.”