by Trevanian
“But what of Katya’s life . . . and mine? They’re worth saving. What are we to do?”
“What we shall do is—” His eyes focused beyond my shoulder. “—is pretend we have been having a light-hearted little chat. For there they are, coming back up the hill. And we must do everything to give them an amusing and memorable day. Well, damn my soul if she isn’t clutching an armful of stinking weeds to shove up my nose!”
I spoke quickly. “Paul, listen. Before they arrive. Allow me a few minutes alone with Katya when we return to Etcheverria. I agree that you and I must make today as light and pleasant as possible for them, and I don’t intend to say a word during the fête. But I insist on having an opportunity to tell her that I understand everything now. I want a last chance to persuade her to come away with me, to save herself.”
“It’s no use. She won’t go with you. Her sense of family is too strong. She loves her father too much.”
“I must have one last chance to convince her! Give me half an hour! A quarter of an hour!”
Katya and Monsieur Treville were near enough that she could wave and gesture towards the mass of wildflowers she was carrying.
“Paul? Please!”
“It’s too dangerous for you to be alone with her. Papa might see you.”
“I accept the risk. It’s my responsibility.”
He gnawed his lip. “Very well, Montjean. You can have your quarter hour alone with her at the bottom of the garden. But for everyone’s sake I must exact a price. You must promise that you’ll never return to Etcheverria after tonight. I must have your word. When Katya refuses to run off with you—as surely she will—you must never try to see her again. It’s too dangerous. Well?”
Monsieur Treville approached us, taking off his panama and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a large handkerchief. “That’s a hard climb, young men! But it’s beautiful down by the Gave. You should have come with us.”
“No, thank you,” Paul called back. “Too much beauty rots the intellect—rather like sugar and the teeth.” Under his breath he said, “Well, Montjean? Have I your word?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I promise.” Then at full voice I asked, “What have you brought us, Katya? Good Lord, have you left any flowers down there at all?”
“Of course! I only took the ones that looked lonely.”
“Well, now!” Monsieur Treville said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s set to tidying things up, then let’s be on our way to the fête d’Alos. Think of it! I shall see with my own eyes the ritual of the Drowned Virgin! Now there’s something! And to have the doctor here as my guide. A young man from the canton. What luck!”
“Oh, yes,” Paul said in a nasal off-tone. “What appalling good luck.”
SINCE Paul chose to take his turn at the reins with Katya beside him, Monsieur Treville sat beside me in the back. He confided to me that his stroll along the river had put him in mind of the degree to which waterways had dictated the location and prosperity of medieval villages. “The Dark Ages were not ‘dark’ in the sense that they were devoid of the light of learning. They are ‘dark,’ not because they lacked light, but because we who examine them are partially blind. We know much, but we know all the wrong things. We know of the kings, the wars, the treaties, the great commercial waves and tides. The bold façades of the era are quite clear, but we don’t know what happened behind those façades. We have little feeling for the affairs of everyday life, the quotidian routine, the fears and aspirations of the common man. By and large, we know what he did, but we don’t know how he felt about it. And the medieval man’s feelings are more significant to an understanding of his time than are the feelings of the modern man to an understanding of today, for that was an era in which superstition mattered more than fact, belief more than knowledge. It was an age of miracles, and demons, and wonders. That is why I am so eager to witness the pastoral of Robert le Diable and the ritual of the Drowned Virgin.”
“I am interested in that myself, Papa,” Paul said over his shoulder. “Frankly, I applaud the practice of drowning all virgins after the age of, say, twenty-two. It might prompt young women to reconsider impulses towards chastity which are, if not downright selfish, at least inhospitable.”
“Is that any way to speak in the presence of your sister?” Monsieur Treville said, genuinely shocked. “I know you are only joking, but virginity is not a subject to be discussed in the presence of young women.”
“Oh? I should have thought it an ideal topic . . . as opposed, for instance, to promiscuity.”
“Paul?” Monsieur Treville said warningly.
Katya turned her face away with a suppressed smile.
“Have it your way, Father,” Paul continued. “I shall never speak of virginity again, nor indeed of any of the other seven deadly virtues. In fact, I’ve always considered them consummately dull. I may say ‘consummately,’ may I not? Or is consummation also a taboo subject?”
Katya made a little face at Paul, signaling him to stop ragging their father. “Do tell us of the Drowned Virgin, Papa,” she said, boldly piloting the conversation into safer waters.
“Ah, there’s a fascinating story, dear. One that is celebrated every year during the fête d’Alos, which we shall be attending today. I suppose Jean-Marc here knows the tale better than I, as he must have attended the fête every year of his boyhood.”
“Actually, sir, I never knew there was any real history behind the event. All I recall is that every pretty girl in the three villages sought to be selected to play the role of the Virgin. It was considered a great honor. The final selection was made by the priest—still is, I suppose.”
“Who’d be in a better position to know?” Paul asked.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Monsieur Treville said, “there is firm history behind the tradition. In 1170, a famous Judgment of God was inflicted on Sancie, the widow of Gaston the Fifth of Bearn. (I wonder why she’s always referred to as a virgin?) She was bound hand and foot and cast into the Gave—that very river off to our right—to test whether she had been guilty of killing her infant, which was born rather a long while after the death of her husband. It was her own brother, the King of Navarre, who designated the method of the trial. It was assumed that if she floated to the surface, then God supported her contention of innocence; but if she drowned, then that was God’s judgment against her. Ah, they had a real God, those medieval men! A God who inhabited the rivers and the rain; not a distant God such as we have, one who is little more than a broker for eternal punishment or pleasure. God lived in every village in those days . . . and the devil, too. Why, I recall an incident in Abense-de-Haut in 1223 in which. . . . .”
Sitting beside him on the rocking surry, while he held the brim of his panama against the wind and held forth on his muddled but generously humanistic views of history, I could understand why Paul considered his father to be innocent of killing that young man whose only crime had been loving Katya. Could anyone justly claim that this man, whose memory contained not a trace of the incident, was a murderer? Had not the crime been committed by another person lurking within—in a way masquerading as—Monsieur Treville? And would justice be served if he was punished, locked away in some stinking asylum for an act of which he had no knowledge, no memory? I could understand Paul’s dilemma; it was my dilemma as well. But overriding all considerations of justice was the welfare of Katya. Her happiness . . . her life perhaps . . . must not be sacrificed to circumstance. And was I innocent of considering my own happiness as well? No, probably not.
“But, Papa, aren’t you going to tell us what happened to the poor woman?” Katya asked, interrupting her father at a bridge between digressions.
“What poor woman?” Monsieur Treville wondered.
“The one who was bound hand and foot and thrown into the river!”
“Oh, her. Well . . . she floated!”
“Good for her,” Paul said. “Smart thinking. But then, I suppose it was the only sensible thing to do under th
e circumstances.”
“Yes, yes, she floated. And when she was pulled out of the river, she was returned to all her former riches and power.”
“And her brother?” I asked. “What happened to him for sacrificing his sister to his own views of right and wrong?”
Paul turned and settled his calm metallic eyes on me.
“History records that he continued his long and uneventful reign,” Monsieur Treville informed us. “And to this day the event is celebrated in the fête d’Alos—Good Lord! What is that!” He turned and looked back at the source of the braying klaxon behind us. A motorcar with ornate brass headlamps had overtaken us and was signaling for us to pull off the road and let it pass. The occupants, two young men and three young women decked out in the fashionable sartorial impedimenta of motoring, were shouting and laughing and waving their arms as they neared, the front of their vehicle nearly touching our rear wheel, and they convulsed with delight when our horse shied and panicked at the noise and unaccustomed appearance of the machine. Paul had all he could do to hold the horse in check as we lurched off the shoulder of the road and into the shallow drainage ditch, nearly overturning our trap. The klaxon sounded a long, taunting blare as they passed, and the young athletic-looking man steering the motorcar shouted out something about “. . . the Twentieth Century!” as they bounced away in a swirl of dust and acrid petrol fumes, shrieking with laughter at the fun of it all.
White-knuckled with fury, Paul held the horse in, as the rest of us descended carefully from the high side of the trap to avoid turning it over. Katya’s first concern was for the horse, which was staring back in its panic, revealing white all around its eyes. With no fear of its rearing or nipping, she stroked its nose and cooed to it until the shuddering of its neck muscles calmed and it was gentled enough to be led up onto the roadway.
While common enough in the cities by the summer of 1914, motorcars were still a rarity in the countryside, and I had never before seen one on the narrow dirt roads of the Basque provinces. The sassy young driver had called out in what I recognized to be a Parisian accent (which the others could not distinguish, as they were from Paris themselves and assumed the clipped, half-swallowed northern sound to be correct and accent-free). The boorish young people were doubtless out on a motoring adventure into the unpenetrated hinterlands and having a bit of sport with the local rustics.
As we continued our trip, I reflected on the characteristic ways in which each of us had reacted to the event. I had been frankly frightened; Monsieur Treville was inspired to ruminate on the inevitable errosion of ancient village traditions that would follow motor transportation; Katya was solicitous of the horse; and Paul had stared after the motorcar, his expression morbidly calm, his eyes cold and flat.
WHEN we approached Alos over a narrow bridge, it was late afternoon and the sun was already beginning to slide towards the mountains that held the village as though in a lap. The thin cry of the txitsu flute and the rattle of the stick drum from the village square told me the pastoral of Robert le Diable was in progress. My recollection of the dance was that it was an interminable and dreary thing, so I was less anxious to view it than were Katya and Monsieur Treville. Paul suggested that they walk on ahead while he and I attended to the horse. We would find them later. They joined the stream of families and couples flowing towards the square, while Paul and I recrossed the stone bridge to the outlying field that had been converted into a temporary yard for rigs and horses, which were tethered and given fodder for a small fee. The man in charge recognized me from years before, and it was inevitable that he thump me on the back and ask after many people of whom I had only the vaguest memory. As the conversation was in Basque, Paul was excluded, and he drifted away as I sought to disengage myself without appearing unfriendly. The price of freedom was an appointment to do a txikiteo, a tour of the bars and buvettes, with the hostler later that night, an appointment I hoped he would forget.
I found Paul at the edge of a group of farmers and shepherds, looking off and smiling to himself. I followed his gaze and saw the motorcar that had almost overturned us. It was stationed beneath a tree at the edge of the meadow, its brass headlamps glinting back the low angle of the setting sun.
“They have been delivered into my hands,” Paul said quietly. “It’s enough to reawaken one’s belief in divine justice.”
“Oh come, Paul. For Katya’s sake, let’s just enjoy ourselves. Forget it.”
He smiled at me. “My dear fellow, I haven’t the slightest intention of forgetting it. Well, Doctor? Shall we locate the others? I am looking forward to this evening. I confess I had feared it would be infinitely dull, but things are beginning to look up.”
“Remember your shoulder. It wouldn’t do to hurt it again.”
“You’re such a good-hearted and solicitous fellow. Perhaps you should consider taking up medicine as a career? Come now, let’s set ourselves to the arduous business of having fun.”
We discovered Katya and Monsieur Treville among the throng collected in the village square, his urbane clothes and her white dress and shoes setting them apart. They were standing in the front of a ring of onlookers around the performers of the pastoral of Robert le Diable, Katya smiling on with affectionate interest, as though the performers were friends of hers, and her father watching intensely, occasionally scribbling notes with a pencil stub on a pad of paper. The Devil and the Horse engaged in off-color buffoonery while the Hero performed the Dance of the Glass, leaping with flashing entrechats and landing, balanced on his soft dancing shoes, on the rim of a thick glass that had been filled with wine and set on the stones before him. Twice the glass spilled and once it shattered, but each time it was replaced with shouts of encouragement until the dancer had effected three sauts in a row without spilling the wine, which accomplishment was rewarded with roars of applause and loud whinnies of the famous cri basque from exuberant onlookers, many of whom had already managed to get their noses bent with wine, to use the local phrase.
“The wine represents blood, I assume,” Monsieur Treville muttered to me. “Perhaps sacramental blood. And I suppose the Devil is one of the ancient, pre-Christian earth deities. Can you provide any insight into the symbolism of the Horse, Doctor?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. And I doubt that anyone here could. It is one of those Basque rituals that is performed simply because it has always been performed, and no one has ever questioned its meaning.”
“Perhaps the Horse represents fertility,” Monsieur Treville suggested. “You see how it chases after the Maiden, who slaps at it and tries to hide herself behind the Devil?”
I nodded absently, more interested in watching the delight and fascination play across Katya’s features than in constructing a symbolic substructure for a ritual I had seen performed so often.
“What are they saying?” Monsieur Treville asked me.
“Who, sir?”
“The Horse and the Devil, with all their shouting and bantering.”
I shrugged, and perhaps my cheeks reddened a little. It had never occurred to me to take any note of it as a boy, but the Basque badinage between the two performers was boldly bawdy, having to do with sexual competence and the size of members. I glanced uneasily towards Katya and cleared my throat. “Ah . . . perhaps you are right, sir. Perhaps the Horse does represent fertility.”
“Hm-m. And what is that large object with the knob on the end that the Maiden keeps trying to take from the Hero?”
I looked for help from Paul, but he smiled blandly back and said, “Yes, Jean-Marc, do tell us. What do you make the object out to be?”
Katya lowered her eyes and smiled the faintest conceivable smile.
“I . . . ah . . . to tell the truth, I never thought about it, sir. Say! What do you think the person who dances on the glass represents?”
Monsieur Treville shrugged. “Both hero and clown . . . could easily represent mankind. And how appropriate, if you consider it for a moment.”
“So,” Paul said
, “if I read the profound symbolic significance of all this correctly, it is the gripping story of Mankind dancing on a glass of blood while the Devil chats with Fertility, and the Maiden tries to steal the Hero’s—excuse me, Doctor, what did you say that was?”
With a final shrill crescendo of the txitsu flute and a rattle of the stick drum, the performance was over, and the crowd applauded wildly and surrounded the performers to treat them to a txikiteo. I had used the Basque word in explaining where the crowd was bringing the players, and Katya asked me to translate it.
“A txikiteo is a tour of the bars, with a glass of wine taken at each one.”
“And how many such places would you estimate there are here in the village?”
“Twenty-five or thirty, counting the temporary buvettes set up in front of every shop.”
“My goodness, Jean-Marc. And they will accomplish a tour of thirty bars?”
I laughed. “It isn’t the accomplishment that matters, it’s the devotion with which the effort is undertaken. The Basques have few native attributes beyond their capacity for dance and hard work, but they rise to the heroic when it comes to drinking at a fête.”
“I have always heard them spoken of as sober-minded people—even dour, if you do not find that word offensive,” Monsieur Treville said.
“Indeed they are. Most of these men are farmers and shepherds. And they work hard and long every day of the year, save for the village fête and the day of the marriage of their children. On those occasions, however, they drink and dance. And they take their vices every bit as seriously as their virtues.”
Night descended upon us quickly, as it does in the mountains, and the crowd in the village square thickened until it was impossible to move without pressing against people. Katya and I soon lost sight of the other two, and I felt obliged to keep my arm around her waist to prevent us from being separated. Colored paper lanterns strung across the square were lit with smoldering punks by young men standing on the shoulders of other young men, and there was much horseplay and toppling and staggering and laughter as they jousted and tugged at one another to see which young man could remain on the shoulders of his teammate the longest. One or two small fights broke out, quickly stanched by friends pulling the combatants apart and taking them off to have a glass or two, but no real bagarres basques broke out, as surely they would before the night was over. There would be at least one great melée of battle, with the young men using their belts and buckles as weapons. And there would be cuts and welts and a few broken noses and chipped teeth. After all, what would a fête be without its bagarre? A feeble and shoddy thing.
