The Summer of Katya

by Trevanian

  But I have promised myself that I would revisit, touch, and handle all the memories of that summer and Katya, and I must do this, although I am not at all confident that I can convert those memories into meaning.

  I first saw Katya at a distance. I was sitting right here, beneath this ancient tree on the riverside park, my notebook in my lap as it is now. I was daydreaming under the guise of meditating, when I looked up and noticed her walking across the deep lawn towards me. My first glance, a squint from beneath my straw boater, was casual, and I returned to my thoughts, only to be attracted again almost immediately. I later told myself that I had sensed something of significance in her approach, but that is nonsense. It was probably the determination in her strong stride that captured my attention. The ladies who took the air and waters of Salies strolled around the paths of the park with studied aimlessness, gossiping as they engaged in attractive light exercise, always in twos, for ladies in those days did not stroll in a park alone. Katya’s purposeful stride had none of the rhythms of strolling.

  I was a bit embarrassed and uncertain at her approach, once I determined that, for lack of alternative in the empty park, I must be her objective. Should I stand to greet her? Would that not seem forward, as she was a stranger to me? On the other hand, how could I receive her sitting with my back against a tree, a notebook in my lap, my skimmer down over my eyes? One has to be young and of a certain temperament to find confusion and embarrassment in such trivial social incidents, and I was exactly the right age and temperament. I sat up and looked around rather theatrically, seeking to communicate to her that I was searching for the object of her quest and was not so bold as to assume it was I. Then I stood, took off my straw hat, and awaited her arrival with a smile that fluttered weakly for want of sure purpose.

  “Mademoiselle?” I ventured when she was standing before me.

  “You are Dr. Montjean?”

  “That is one of my burdens, yes.” It was a habit of mine to rehearse social situations and to develop what I thought were cultured and interesting responses to simple questions. The effect was rather stilted and artificial, and I almost always regretted the words as they escaped from my mouth.

  “My brother has had an accident, Doctor.” The matter-of-fact way she said this suggested there was no great urgency.

  “Oh?” I looked across the park, half expecting to see someone approaching—a friend, the brother himself—for who would send a young lady to fetch a doctor if there were others available. “Ah . . . where is your brother now, Mademoiselle . . . ?” I lifted my eyebrows in gentle request for her name.

  “He’s at home.”

  “At home?”

  “Yes. We live at Etcheverria. Do you know the house?”

  I confessed that I did not.

  “It’s two-point-six kilometers from Salies, up the Mauleon road.”

  I had to smile at the precision. “Two-point-six kilometers exactly?”

  She nodded. “Shall we go?”

  “Ah . . . by all means. I shall have to collect my bag.” She turned and began to walk across the grass towards the village square before I could offer my arm, so I found myself awkwardly hastening to catch up with her. “Ah . . . how did you come into the village? Have you a trap?”

  “I rode in on my bicycle. I left it in the square.”

  Young women of that era sometimes teetered about on bicycles for amusement and display, but the use of them for transportation was not common, inhibitions of propriety no less prohibitive than inhibitions of dress. I found her indifference to those inhibitions intriguing. “Can you tell me something about your brother’s accident, Mademoiselle . . . ?”

  “Treville. Oh, I don’t believe it’s anything really serious, Doctor. He fell from his machine.”

  “His bicycle?”

  “Yes. We were having a race, and he fell.”

  “A race? I see.” I glanced over at her profile and was taken by the golden, suntanned cheek and the healthy complexion, uncommon in women of the middle class where pallor was not only accounted an element of beauty, but a cherished proof that one was leisured. She was hatless, a lapse of sartorial propriety when women wore fluttering, broad-brimmed hats even when motoring or riding. Her full dark hair was drawn back in a soft bun, but wisps had escaped to float about her temples—disarranged, no doubt, by her bicycle ride of exactly two and six-tenths kilometers. It would not be correct to describe her as a beauty, for there was too much vigor in her features, too much energy in her expression, to satisfy the popular ideal of plump passive beauty. One might more accurately call her a handsome woman . . . I thought her a very handsome woman indeed. I was looking at the graceful line of her neck, the nape of which was brushed by soft commas of hair, when she turned to me, her eyes asking why I was staring at her in that way.

  “Ah . . . and what is the nature of your brother’s injuries?” I asked quickly.

  “Well, he’s a bit scraped up, of course. And it could be that he has a broken clavicle. But there’s no concussion.”

  I frowned. “I am impressed, Mlle Treville. You seem to have some knowledge of medicine.”

  She shrugged and puffed air between slack lips in the way that peasants or street gamines dismiss some insignificant matter. “Not really.”

  “But most people, and nearly all women, would have called the clavicle a collarbone.”

  “One summer I developed an interest in anatomy, and I read several books. That’s all. There’s no mystery.”

  How can I explain the implications of a young lady in the summer of 1914 admitting to an interest in anatomy? It would be as though one of today’s pert Modern Young Things were to confess to a fascination with pornography. The conventions of polite conversation did not admit the existence of the human body, much less its parts separately considered.

  We had passed out of the park and were walking along the tree-lined central avenue of Salies towards the clinic. Two women on the other side of the street stopped to exchange whispers about the hatless girl walking brazenly with the young doctor. And indeed there was something in the vigor of Katya’s long, athletic stride that might be considered unladylike. It would not be exactly fair to say that ladies of that time minced, but certainly they did not stride along, as it was clearly infra dig to appear to have to get anywhere with urgency.

  “How can you know your brother does not suffer from a concussion?” I asked.

  “His eyes respond to light by a contraction of the pupil,” she answered with a tone suggesting an unnecessary statement of the obvious. “How else would one test for concussion?”

  “How else indeed,” I said, a bit nettled. “I take it there was also a summer’s reading devoted to diagnostics?”

  She stopped walking and turned to me, puzzled by the archness of my tone. Her eyes searched mine in a most disconcerting way, with an expression of sincere interrogation mixed with amusement, an expression I was later to find particular to her, and very dear to me. “I’ve been guilty of invading your domain of authority, haven’t I?” she said. “I am sorry.”

  “Oh, no. It isn’t that at all,” I protested.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Certainly not . . . well, yes frankly.” I grinned. “After all, I am supposed to be the wise old doctor, and you the distressed and admiring patient.”

  She smiled. “I promise to be as distressed and admiring as possible the next time we meet.”

  “Ah, that’s more like it.”

  “And you must play the wise old doctor . . . well, the wise young doctor.”

  “Young . . . but dignified.”

  “Oh, yes, dignified to be sure. Tell me, would it damage your dignity to learn that we have walked past the clinic?”

  “What? Ah! So we have. Pretending to forget my destination is a little ruse I use to test whether my companion is paying attention.”

  “Very clever.”

  “Thank you. Would you care to step in while I gather my things?”

  “Thank you,
no. I’ll wait for you here.”

  I borrowed Doctor Gros’s sulky and we rode south out of town into the countryside where apple trees bordering the dirt road scented the noonday air with their ripening fruit. Despite my practice of rehearsing ideal conversations to myself and loading my statements until they dripped with wit and insight, I could think of nothing amusing to say. She, for her part, seemed uninterested in social chatter as she sat with her face lifted to the sun in evident pleasure. Twice she turned to me and smiled in a generous, impersonal way. She delighted in the warmth of the sun and the touch of the breeze created by the motion of the trap, and she smiled back at the moment that was giving her pleasure. I was included in that smile as though I were a likable, anonymous thing.

  Failing to think of anything interesting or witty to say, I fell back upon the banal. “I take it you are not of the pays, Mademoiselle?” Her speech lacked the chanting twang and the sounded final e of the south.

  “No.” She was silent for a moment, then she seemed to realize that a one-syllable answer was a bit brusque. “No, we came for the waters.”

  “It must be inconvenient.”

  She had already returned to her pleasurable reverie, so it was several moments before she said, “I’m sorry. You were saying? . . .”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Oh? I see.”

  Half a minute passed in silence. “I simply suggested that it must be inconvenient.”

  “What must be?”

  I sighed. “Living so far from the village . . . being here for the waters and living so far from the village.” I sincerely wished I had not entered on this topic of conversation that neither interested her nor showed me to advantage.

  “We prefer it, really.”

  “I suppose you don’t have to come into town every day for your regimen of the waters, then.” I said this knowing perfectly well that she did not come in every day. Salies is a very small place, and I was a romantic young man with much leisure. If she came often to Salies, I would have seen her; and if I had seen her, I would certainly have remembered her.

  “No, not every day. In fact . . .” She smiled a greeting to an old peasant we were passing on the road, and he lifted his chin in the crisp Basque salute that is as much dismissal as it is greeting. Then she turned again to me. “In fact, we don’t come in at all.”

  “But . . .”

  “When I told you we were here to take the waters, I was lying.”

  “Lying?” I smiled. “Do you make a practice of lying?”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “It’s often the easiest thing to do, and sometimes the kindest. It is true that we are here for reasons of health, and to avoid unnecessary questions I say we are taking the waters.”

  “I see. But what—” I stopped short and laughed. “I was going to indulge in one of those unnecessary questions.”

  She laughed with me. “I’m sure you were. Ah! We have arrived. That lane to the right.”

  The grassy, rutted condition of the tree-lined lane attested to its long period of disuse before the Trevilles occupied the house. As we approached the ancient stone heap called Etcheverria we passed along the crumbling wall of a derelict garden grown rank with weeds among which a few volunteer flowers struggled in stunted bloom, reminders of the passing hand of man. Twice the horse jerked aside nervously.

  “It’s haunted, you know,” she said with a smile.

  “And you don’t mind living in a haunted house?”

  “No, not the house. The garden. Local tradition says the garden is haunted.” She cocked her head thoughtfully and added, “Well, perhaps the house is haunted as well. Most houses are . . . in one way or another.”

  “That’s an interesting observation. But Dr. Freud would contend that it is most people, not most houses, that are haunted . . . in one way or another.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  I was genuinely surprised. And fascinated. “You have read Dr. Freud?”

  “Yes. After I had learned what I wanted to know about anatomy.” She laughed. “One leads to the other, I suppose. First you learn how the various bits function, then you wonder why they bother to.”

  We turned in at the sagging gate. It was not necessary to tie up the horse, as she was an experienced doctor’s mare used to standing calmly in the traces. By the time I walked around to offer her a hand down, Katya had already begun to descend on her own. My clumsy attempt to give unneeded assistance and her last-minute effort to accept the titular support of my guiding hand created a moment of awkward grappling that made us both laugh.

  “This is the stuff of low comedy,” she said.

  “Or of high romance,” I added.

  She smiled up at me. “No. Only low comedy, I think.”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right. That’s the first time I ever danced with a woman who wasn’t—” I am sure I must have blushed to my ears as I realized that my hand still rested on her waist. I pulled it back quickly.

  She lead the way towards the house. “A woman who wasn’t . . . what?” she asked over her shoulder.

  How could I say: who wasn’t wearing stays? My palm still felt the indescribably exciting texture of soft flesh under firm fabric. “Who wasn’t . . .” I cleared my throat. “. . . a member of my family.”

  She glanced at me sideways. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Good. I often lie, you see. It’s the easiest thing to do, and sometimes the kindest.”

  She chuckled. “All right.”

  The façade of the house was in poor repair; rising damp had rotted the plaster in places, revealing rough-cut stone beneath. As we stepped into the central hall I was aware of a dank chill that must have made the place most uncomfortable in winter.

  “Katya?” a man’s voice called from a room off the principal hall.

  “Yes, Paul,” she answered. “I have the doctor with me. Help is on its way, if you can manage to cling to life for a moment longer.”

  The man laughed in full voice as she motioned me to follow her into the salon.

  “Paul, this is Dr. Montjean. Dr. Montjean, my poor battered brother.”

  As he rose from a chaise, his right arm bound against his chest by strips of linen, my astonishment was undisguised.

  They were twins. Identical in every feature: the full mouths, the high foreheads, the prominent cheekbones, the firm chins, the thick chestnut hair. The features were identical, but the effect was startlingly different, as the same elements were interpreted in the context of their sexes. What in her was a handsome beauty appeared frail and almost effeminate in him. What in her movements was grace, in his seemed affectation. An unkind critic might have described her as having, in a way of speaking, a bit too much face; while he had too little. This difference-within-similarity was nowhere more evident than in their eyes. The same almond shape and slightly crooked set, the same clear pale grey made startling by dark lush lashes, but they created totally opposite impressions. She had a gentleness of glance that seemed to invite one to look into the springs of her being. His glance was metallic and impenetrable. Light glinted on the surface of his eyes, while it glowed from deep within hers. Her eyes were bridges; his barriers.

  They laughed together at my frank surprise. “It’s a tired old prank, Doctor, not warning people in advance that we are twins,” the brother said as he pressed my hand in that awkward upside-down way of the left-handed handshake. “But we never weary of the effect it has on people the first time they see us together. Forgive us for amusing ourselves at your expense, but there is so little to divert one in this out-of-the-way bled.”

  I sought to recover my aplomb by assuming a professional tone. “Your sister tells me you fell from your bicycle.”

  He glanced at her and grinned. “Well, I suppose you could put it that way if you wanted to. Actually—”

  “—I’ll see to a little refreshment,” she interposed quickly. “A cup of tisane, Doctor?”

  “Please.”

  As she left
the room, the brother raised his voice, pursuing her with his words. “That’s one way of putting it, Doctor. Actually, my good sister knocked me from my machine!”

  “Rubbish!” she called back from down the hall.

  He laughed softly and shook his head as I began undoing the rather expertly wrapped bandage. He winced at first contact but spoke on as I made my examination. “It’s true, you know. She’s vicious in competition. We were having a little race to the bottom of the lane and back and—Argh! Jesus, Doctor! If you are going to ask if that hurt, the answer is yes!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I wonder if that’s enough? Well, I got ahead of her in the race by the mild subterfuge of starting before she was ready. I had reached the end of the lane and was on my way back, and what did she do? She—Ah! Damn it, man! Was your last post with the Inquisition? It’s broken, I assume?”

  “Cracked surely.”

  “Rotten luck. Well, as I passed her on the way back she kicked out at me and drove me into the garden wall. Just like that. The Jockey Club would certainly have disqualified her.”

  “The Jockey Club? You are Parisian then?”

  He lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “Why, yes. I’m amazed you’ve heard of it. From your accent, I assumed you were from hereabouts.”

  “I was unaware that I had an accent.” Actually, I had been at great pains while studying in Paris to lose my singsong Basque accent, as its rustic implications had been a source of ridicule among my fellow students.

  “Oh, it’s not much of an accent, I suppose. More a matter of rhythm than pronunciation. I am something of a student of accents, as nothing is so illustrative of breeding and class as customs of speech.”