The Summer of Katya

by Trevanian

  INCREDIBLE though it later seemed, I woke the next morning without a trace of Katya in my mind, without the slightest sense of anticipation, beyond a general feeling of good will and buoyancy. It was not until I had made my toilet and was crossing the square to the café where I took morning brioches and coffee that the thought that she was coming into town for her bicycle slipped casually into my mind, then leapt, as it were, from thin script to bold italics in an instant, and a smile brightened my face. It did not occur to me to use the word love in assessing my feelings. Katya had, to be sure, been either in my thoughts or just beyond the rim of them since I left her the day before, and I could recall with tactile memory the brush of her soft warm lips on my cheek. But love? No, I didn’t think of love. I was, however, ashamed to have forgotten all about her arrival for almost half an hour that morning. The lapse made me feel inconstant . . . unfaithful, almost.

  The day crawled by, the passage of time marked only by my trivial duties and tasks, and I began to fear that she would not come after all. The deterioration of the weather increased my apprehension as single dazzling clouds, like torn meringues, sailed lazily overhead and began to pile up on the horizon, thickening to a dark pewter. Would she decide not to dare the walk into Salies? What if she arrived, then a great storm broke, making it impossible for her to return home? We would have to seek shelter somewhere. Under the arcades of the square? No. Beneath a fine old tree? No. The gazebo hidden away at the end of the river park?

  . . . perhaps . . . my room?

  No! No. What nonsense! What an animal you are!

  The gazebo then. Yes. The heavy drops would drum on the zinc roof, making conversation impossible. Alone and screened from the world by a silver curtain of rain, we would sit in silence . . . sharing the silence . . . holding hands . . . not needing conversation . . . no, better yet, our relationship beyond conversation. . . .

  “Would it be unreasonable of me to ask when you’re going to finish that prescription, Montjean?” Doctor Gros startled me by asking. “Or is there something beyond that window that has a prior claim on your attention?”

  I muttered some apology or another and plied my pestle with unnecessary vigor.

  Midafternoon the wind changed, the clouds were herded away to the west, and the sunlight returned—quite inconsiderately, it seemed to me.

  The day wore on and the slanting rays of the sun had plunged the arcades on the west side of the square into deep shadow when, for the thousandth time, my attention strayed from my pharmaceutical drudgery and I looked out my window in worried anticipation. She was just passing out of the dense shadow, and her white dress seemed to burst into brightness as she walked with her exuberant stride towards the clinic, hatless, but carrying a closed parasol.

  My heart twisted with pleasure.

  AS I approached her on the square, still tugging on my linen jacket, a silly smile took possession of my face and would not release it, although I was sure every eye in the village followed my slightest gesture. She smiled too, but hers was charming, where mine was inane.

  There was a café frequented by the lady patients, as it offered a thin pallid liquid that claimed to be English tea (then quite fashionable) served with small cakes which, as they were dry and tasteless, were assumed to be quintessentially British. I suggested that we take some refreshment there, after her long walk.

  “Exactly four thousand two hundred thirty-three paces, from my door to this spot,” she specified.

  “Exactly?” I asked in a tone of bantering admonishment.

  She shrugged. “For all I know, it might be. Frankly, I wouldn’t care to sit among the ladies and nibble at biscuits. May I have a citron pressé somewhere were we can sit in the sun?”

  “Of course. In fact my mood is so expansive that I might even offer you two citrons pressés.”

  I am sure it was not just my imagination that the pairs of ladies strolling the square or sitting at the “English” café glanced rather often in the direction of our table, then looked away with studied indifference as they exchanged brief comments. And I felt there was a tone of insinuation, if not downright collaboration, in the excessive graciousness with which our waiter served us. But my annoyance at these intruders evaporated in the pleasure I took in our conversation, which might have appeared to an eavesdropping stranger to be banal and commonplace, but which seemed to me to be filled with significant things unsaid, meaningful gestures withheld, touching intimacies unexpressed. I asked after her brother, her father, and her ghost, all of whom, it appeared, were thriving—although that may not be the mot juste in the case of a ghost. Every moment after the first quarter hour I dreaded that she would say it was time for her to return home. But she seemed perfectly content to sit, sipping her citron pressé, while drawing me out with questions about the deprivations of my youth, my struggle for an education, my medical and literary aspirations. I spoke almost without pause for the better part of an hour, coming to the conclusion, in my youthful egoism, that she was a delightful and entertaining conversationalist.

  “It’s fascinating,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone so concerned with the future as you. My father lives in the distant past, and my brother and I have always lived from moment to moment, or at most from day to day. We never talk about the future. I suppose I have always thought of the future as a great heap of tomorrows each waiting its turn to become today.”

  “How then do you make plans?”

  “Plans? We don’t. That is . . . we don’t plan in the sense that we seek to achieve things, or become something. We do, of course, try our best to avoid embarrassments . . . difficulties.”

  “Difficulties of what kind?”

  She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “Oh, of all kinds.”

  “Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with your brother.”

  “I was not aware there was anything wrong with Paul.”

  “Maybe if he had met a few difficulties along the way, he wouldn’t be so bored with life, so superior in his attitudes.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit of a snob?”

  “Me? A snob?”

  “Not everyone has had a life of struggle to exercise him and make him strong. Not everyone is free to make a career, to anticipate a future.” Her smile was tinged with a sadness that drew my tenderest feelings towards her. Then, with a faint shift in the corners of her eyes, the smile became a look of serious examination as she searched the features of my face one by one in a way that quite discomfited me. “Dr. Montjean, are you aware that you are handsome?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Most handsome men know it only too well, and their confident posturing is a nuisance. But you don’t seem to be aware of your beauty. It’s an attractive ignorance.”

  I shook my head, nonplussed. “Young women shouldn’t call young men beautiful.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Well . . . it isn’t done.”

  “I don’t care about what’s done and not done.”

  “Nevertheless . . . and furthermore it’s embarrassing.”

  “Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. Well, I’m afraid we may have a more serious kind of embarrassment coming our way.” With a lift of her chin she indicated the sky, and I looked up to discover that while I had been absorbed in our chat, a shift of wind had brought the pewter-bellied clouds back over the village. Puffs of cool wind began to eddy up little dust swirls on the cobbled square.

  “It looks as though we shall have to wait the rain out,” I said, the image of the gazebo coming to mind.

  “Oh, but I can’t! Father doesn’t know I’ve come into the village. He would be distressed not to find me home, when he emerges from his ‘work’ for his tea.”

  “But . . . surely you can’t ride your bicycle back in the rain!”

  “I don’t see that I have any choice. I’ll make a race of it and, who knows, perhaps I can beat the rain back.”

  “I can’t allow it.”

  She looked at me with comic
surprise. “You can’t allow it?”

  “I didn’t mean that exactly.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Listen. Tell you what. I’ll get the clinic’s sulky and tie your machine on behind. And we’ll race the rain together.”

  “But . . . even if we won, surely you would get drenched on the way back.”

  “I don’t mind. In fact, I’d rather enjoy it.”

  She looked at me quizzically. “You know, I believe you would. Very well. Let’s race the rain.”

  WHEN I asked Doctor Gros if I could use the sulky, he turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Aiding and abetting, the judges will call it! Accomplice before the fact! My career will be in ruins. My reputation will be . . . well, my career anyway will be damaged. I don’t suppose it’s any use to appeal to your sense of honor, but you might at least—Montjean!” he called after me. “You could have the decency to hear me out, you know!”

  KATYA and I came within three minutes of winning our race against the weather, but from the point of view of our appearance when we arrived at the courtyard of Etcheverria, we might as well have lost by half an hour. We were soaked to the skin, as her white silk parasol was comically ineffective.

  Just as we turned up the poplar lane, the sky broke open and a brash of warm plump rain burst upon us. By the time I reined in at the courtyard, the leather of the rig was glistening with water, the mare was steaming, and Katya and I looked as though we had just been pulled from a river.

  Laughing at each other’s appearance, we entered the central hall, wiping the rain from our faces. My linen jacket hung grey and limp from my shoulders, and my trousers were heavy from waist to knee. For her part, Katya seemed delighted with the adventure, though her dress was sodden and wisps of hair were plastered to her temples and forehead. I suppose we were rather noisy in our excitement, for Paul Treville snatched open the door to the salon and glared at us in fury.

  “Katya! For the love of God! Father is working!”

  Our delight collapsed in an instant, and I stepped forward. “It’s all my fault, Monsieur Tre—”

  “I had assumed as much, Doctor. Katya, what could you have been thinking of?”

  “Really, Paul . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her whole demeanor seemed to shrink into a most uncharacteristic humility.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” the brother said. Then he turned and stared through me stonily. “When the good doctor has seen fit to deny us his company.”

  “Before I go, Monsieur Treville, I must tell you that I resent your tone, not only on my own behalf, but on that of Katya.”

  “What right have you to resent anything I do or say? And by what right do you address my sister by her given name?”

  I turned to Katya to make my farewells and was struck by her uncertain, deflated attitude. But it was her slight movement away from me as I began to speak that stung me and left me with nothing to say. I turned back to her brother. “You are quite right, of course, to say that I shouldn’t address Mlle Treville by her first name. It was the lapse of the moment. But I assure you, sir, that—”

  “You need assure me, Doctor, of nothing . . . save for your intention to depart immediately.”

  With my whole being, I yearned to hit him in the face. But I resisted for Katya’s sake. Gathering together what dignity my drenched condition and pounding pulse permitted, I bowed curtly and went to the door.

  “Just a moment, Doctor!” It is impossible to describe the sudden change in Paul Treville’s tone of voice from that of the haughty, outraged aristocrat to one of concerned fatigue. “Just a moment, if you please.” He closed his eyes and drew a long breath. “Do forgive me. I have been ungracious. Katya, could you look to that new girl in the kitchen? Father will want his supper soon, and she has the appearance of one who would open an egg with a battering ram.”

  Without a word to me, without even looking at me, Katya left the hall, her head down and her shoulders rounded.

  “And Katya?” Paul arrested her at the entrance to the housekeeping quarters, where she stopped without turning around. He smiled sadly. “Do warm yourself at the fire, and dry your hair. You look frightful.” She nodded and departed. He looked after her for a moment and sighed; then he turned to me. “Would you join me in the salon, Dr. Montjean? I’ve a fire going, and you look as though you could do with a little drying out yourself.

  “Brandy?” he asked, following me into the salon.

  “Thank you, no,” I said stiffly, uncomfortable and confused by his sudden change of attitude, and even more disturbed by Katya’s humble, almost servile, reaction to his burst of anger. The fire in the marble hearth was inviting, but I did not approach it, still too angry with him to accept any hospitality at his hands.

  “Please sit down,” he said as he poured out two large brandies, not having heard, or choosing to ignore, my refusal. With only his left hand free, his empty right sleeve pinned against his bound shoulder, he carried the brandy glasses rather precariously between his fingers. I accepted the glass, not wishing to appear petty, and when he took a chair beside the fire, there was nothing for me to do but join him, my chill skin absorbing the welcome warmth, whether I wanted it or not.

  “I take it your sister failed to tell you that she was coming into Salies to collect her bicycle,” I said with some distant dignity.

  “You take it correctly. But then, she is not in the habit of accounting to me for her actions. But for more than an hour I have been searching everywhere for her. Consideration for others is not one of Katya’s attributes.”

  “We took some refreshment at a café on the square. The weather turned threatening, so I offered to carry her and her machine home. There was nothing more to it than—”

  “My dear fellow, I require no explanation of Katya’s behavior. And if I did, I should ask for it from her. My sister’s character and breeding are such that her actions are not dependent on the moral rectitude of her company. Good heavens! Did you imagine for a moment that I thought—” He burst into a laugh that was rather insulting. “No, no, Montjean. I am sure there is nothing but casual friendship between you. After all . . .” He waved his glass towards me, but was kind enough not to complete the thought. “No, Katya’s been kept too much to herself by circumstances, and hers is too open and generous a personality to enjoy being alone. However, we live—I need hardly remind you—in a small-minded and narrow community where reputations can fall victim to rumor on the slightest foundation.”

  “In fact, I did fail to consider the evil of local gossip. That was thoughtless of me. But, after all? A glass of citron pressé and half an hour’s conversation in the public square? What could they make of that?”

  “Everything. As my family has come, to its sorrow, to know, having been victims of savage gossip often enough. Therefore . . .” He finished off his brandy and took my empty glass with his to the side table. “. . . I feel justified in demanding that you do something to retrieve Katya’s reputation.”

  “Yes, of course. Anything. But . . . what?”

  “The honorable thing, of course.”

  “And that is?” I asked with open astonishment.

  He measured out the brandy with more precision than was necessary, taking his time before turning to me and saying, “I want you to call on her at her home, as a young man should. Be seen with her in the company of her family. I hope I do not ask too much?” He smiled, and I was struck by how, particularly in profile, he was the very image of Katya. There was something reassuring in this. And something disconcerting as well.

  “I should, of course, be delighted to call on Mlle Treville.”

  He shrugged. “That goes without saying. But I must require that you join me in an innocent little subterfuge.”

  I rose to receive my glass and used the opportunity to cross to the other side of the hearth to complete my drying out. “What little subterfuge is that?”

  “It concerns my father. It is imperative—absolutely imperative—that my fa
ther never get the impression that you are visiting Katya as a young man visits a young woman. Is that understood?”

  “But why not?”

  He ignored the question, leaving me to understand that his insistence was reason enough. “During supper last night, my father noticed that I was one-armed—really quite a feat of observation for him, lost as he is in his world of medieval village life. We shall introduce you at supper as my doctor, and your visits here will be for the ostensible purpose of attending to my injury—assisting Father Time, as it were.”

  “Am I to take supper with you then?”

  He grinned. “My dear fellow, we could hardly send you out into the rain, now could we?”

  “And yet you seemed perfectly capable of that not ten minutes ago.”

  “I have always admired social flexibility in others, and I seek to develop that quality in myself.”

  “Flexibility? Capriciousness, more like. May I tell you something quite frankly?”

  “Oh, dear. Well, if you absolutely must.”

  “I consider you to be willful and thoughtless of others’ feelings. Not ten minutes ago, you were storming about, the perfect image of the outraged brother, when you knew quite well you had nothing to be outraged about. You spoke offensively to me and, what is more, you quite crushed your sister. Then suddenly you became all reason and friendship—even to the ridiculous point of playing the matchmaker. And that when neither of us has the slightest reason to believe that Mlle Treville is the least bit interested in me. I believe anyone would describe such behavior as childish and irresponsible.”

  Paul stared into the fire and I fell silent, my heart pounding, surprised by my frankness and daring. Then he looked languidly over at me. “Pardon me? You were saying?”

  “I am sure you heard me.”

  “In fact I did. But I did you the service of pretending not to. So far as your supper here goes, let me warn you that we live meagerly, if not meanly. Our peasant servants cook to their peasant taste, so our evening meal consists of a soup more notable for its density than its flavor, crusts of the local bread, which could easily double as paving material, and a garnish of greenish oddments plucked from the breast of the earth. The kindest description of our repasts would be . . . Spartan. They belong to that vast category of unpleasant events that we are enjoined to indulge in because they build character.” He rose. “Now, if leaving you to your own company for a few moments does not expose me to accusations of abandoning you to dull society, I shall go tell Katya to have another place laid. Who knows?” He grinned. “She may even be pleased. She has a capacity for deriving pleasure from the most insignificant things.” And he left the salon.