The Summer of Katya (16 page)

“—What?” I rose. “I don’t believe… What are you saying?”

“Now, now. It was all a wretched accident, of course. After a long inquiry, upon the details of which the smut-hunting journalists battened, Treville was cleared of any intention of wrongdoing. It appears that the young victim had been an occasional visitor to the home. It was common gossip that the lad was paying court to the young Treville girl. Presumably the boy had—or thought he had—an arrangement to meet the young lady rather late one night. He was creeping about the grounds, possibly seeking informal entry into the house—” Doctor Gros raised a hand. “Don’t bother to object. I am making no judgments concerning Mlle Treville’s character. I am simply recounting the tale as told to me. Well… the rest is simple enough. Monsieur Treville, believing the young man to be a prowler or burglar, shot him dead. The judicial investigators found no reason to doubt his version of the event, but of course parlor gossip fabricated its own narrative. Outraged father… in flagrante delicto… that sort of thing. The more generously disposed of their friends suggested that an elopement had been intercepted. The fellow telling me the story dismissed this possibility with a yellow leer. Well, that’s about it. As soon as the legal stew subsided, the Trevilles left, fleeing as far from Paris as they could. And one can’t get much farther from Paris than Salies, either geographically or culturally. I hope you understand that I am telling you all this only because I believe you ought to know.”

In my distress I had drifted to the window of his study, where I stared out into the dark garden. So overcome was I by what I heard, so great was the struggle to comprehend and accept it, that it was several moments before I could mutter, “Yes, yes. I understand that.”

“And you’re not offended by my interference?”

I shook my head. “No… no. Why do you doubt Monsieur Treville’s version of what happened?”

“What makes you assume I do?”

“You began all this by asking if I thought it wise to join the Trevilles in their trip to Alos.”

Doctor Gros was silent for a moment. “Yes. So I did,” he said heavily, letting it go at that.

I turned away. “God! How terrible that must have been for them! The journalists… the whispering. No wonder they choose to live off by themselves, secluded from society. Think of how the rumors and gossip must have lacerated them! Poor Katya! This explains so much of their distant, retiring behavior.”

“Perhaps… perhaps. But it doesn’t quite explain… everything. For instance, it doesn’t explain why they have suddenly decided to flee from Salies. None of our young men have been reported missing, to my knowledge. And even you, although your wits have been battered by love, appear to be in reasonably good health.”

“It’s not a thing to joke about!”

“No, of course not. Terrible taste. Do forgive me.”

“It’s possible that they are fleeing from what happened in Paris. If you learned about it by accident in St. Jean, it’s not beyond imagination that ugly rumors have pursued them even here.”

“Yes, that’s possible. And I pity anyone scarred by the acid of provincial gossip. Gossip gives our women an opportunity to dabble in delicious sin without having to repent, sin they will never experience at first hand, protected from temptation as they are by lack of courage, lack of imagination, and lack of opportunity—which deficiencies they view as proofs of their moral rectitude.” He was silent for a moment; then he spoke haltingly. “Is this… how to put this delicately?… is this your first love, Montjean?”

I did not respond.

“Allow me to assume from your silence that it is. You’re having rather a nasty go of it, and I am sorry. One’s first love is supposed to be all tinted mist and perfume… save for the final recriminations, of course. You’ve had bad luck, son. The tawdriness is not supposed to emerge until one’s later loves.”

I could not conceive of “later loves.” I was sure that my capacity to love was as narrow as it was deep, and that Katya was my love, not one of my loves. As time was to demonstrate, such was the case.

“Well then!” Doctor Gros said, boldly changing the timbre, uncomfortable in this unaccustomed role of the compassionate man. “I suppose I should congratulate you on saving the Hastoy boy’s arm yesterday. I’ve already heard about your noble feat from several sources. However—lest you grow vain—let me assure you that the reason everyone is impressed is that they doubted you were capable.”

“I see.” I forced a watery smile. “You don’t mind if I take tomorrow off and spend it with the Trevilles, do you?”

“My dear boy,” Doctor Gros said, his voice trembling with sincerity as he patted me on the shoulder, “my dear boy. I want you always to view yourself as uniquely dispensable.”

* * *

Like so many others, I was spoiled by the magnificent weather of that summer, coming to accept day after day of perfect beauty as the right and normal way of things, forgetting that, as Monsieur Treville had said, cold and darkness are the constants in the vast stretches of the universe, light and warmth existing only in the vicinity of minute star-specks. In a similar way, loneliness and resignation are constants in the life of a man, youth and love being passing moments whose very preciousness lies in their mutability. There would be nothing wrong with clinging to the comfortable fiction that these pleasant ephemera were the eternal conditions of life, were it not that, when they pass, as inevitably they must, we are left to spend the bulk of our days in bitterness, feeling somehow cheated by fate. We end with being plagued by the tortures of envy and hope which deny us the modest, but enduring, pleasures of calm and resignation.

These are, of course, the reflections of age, and they come only after one has accepted his personal mortality. But I was young that summer, and immortal, and there were no leavening traces of calm and resignation in my mood as I walked the two and a half kilometers to Etcheverria. The sunlight poured down upon the countryside like a golden liquid through air refreshed by breezes bearing the scent of grass and flowers. Overhead, puffy fair-weather clouds churned sedately along on their way to the mountains, and birds cried out their joy in the hedgerows. I was filled with a sense of my youth and strength, and with a desire to embrace life—to struggle with it if need be—to fashion fate in the image of my desires.

Oh, I had passed a hard enough night before falling into a fragile sleep, feeling an irrational and ignoble jealousy towards that poor young man who was killed in Paris. I could not picture the bungling, absent-minded scholar that was Monsieur Treville actually leveling a pistol and shooting someone. It was unthinkable… horrible.

But by the time I had risen, shaved particularly closely, and begun the pleasant early-morning walk to Etcheverria, I found that I was experiencing more relief and hope than I had in days. The ominous shadow surrounding the Trevilles was no longer a mystery; it was a palpable thing that could be confronted and fought. I was determined to speak with Paul at the first opportunity, seek to convince him that running away from gossip and insinuations would not, in the long run, solve anything. Eventually the rumors would find them again; ultimately they would have to make a stand and face their tormentors; time purchased with fruitless efforts to escape was not worth the cost in peace, stability, and comfort.

When I arrived at Etcheverria, my persuasive arguments were rehearsed and marshaled, but I found myself instantly swept up in the preparations for the picnic and fte. In the same breath as her greeting, Katya asked me if I would mind carrying a basket out to the stable where Paul was harnessing up the trap… then I might come back and help her select the wine… oh, and go over the list with her to see if anything had been forgotten… maybe, on second thought, I should help Paul, who wasn’t the most competent hand in the world with horses… there would be dancing at the fte, wouldn’t there?… oh, of course there would be dancing… things might seem in a bit of turmoil, but really everything was in readiness, save for last-minute matters, of course… Father was most excited at the prospect of observing the fte at first hand and chatting with the old-timers… would these shoes do for dancing?… oh, how would you know… come to think of it, where is Father?…

During the cataract of greeting words, she accepted the pebble I had found along the road and dropped it into her reticule, then she absent-mindedly brushed my cheek with a kiss of thanks.

It was the comfortable offhandedness of the kiss that pleased me most.

I found Paul in the stable, grumbling and swearing as he struggled awkwardly to harness the trap while favoring his hurt shoulder and attempting to avoid any contact between the animal and his white linen suit. I laughed and offered to take over the job.

“Be my guest, old fellow. I have no false pride about my ability to perform the tasks of a stableboy. After all, one wouldn’t ask a stableboy to entertain three ancient gentlewomen at a garden party while exchanging wit with half a dozen dense old patricians and, at the same time, keeping a gaggle of adolescent girls giggling and blushing with the odd wink or shrug. That’s the kind of thing I was trained to accomplish. To each his metier. I’ll help Katya with the wine. More down my alley.” He gave the horse one last look of disgust. “Do you know why I dislike horses?”

“No. Why?”

“It’s their antisocial impulse to defecate constantly. Horsey sorts will babble on about the noble beasts until your eyelids are leaden, but they never seem to mention this little flaw in their character. Someday I shall own a motorcar.” He started to leave, but stopped at the stable door. “But then, with my luck, the damned motorcar will probably be forever dropping iron filings out of its back end.”

“Do go help Katya with the wine.”

By the time I brought the trap around to the front of the house, everything was in readiness. But Monsieur Treville was nowhere to be found. After calling up and down stairs for him and out in the garden, Katya discovered him in his study, sitting at his desk scribbling notes, still wearing the broad-brimmed panama he had chosen for the outing. He explained to us that he had just stepped into his study to fetch something—he couldn’t recall just what—and his eye had fallen on a little phrase in one of the open books on his desk, so naturally he read it over; then a corresponding reference occurred to him that demanded checking for accuracy; and the next thing he knew an hour had passed, and everyone in the South of France was running about bellowing his name. Most disconcerting.

The old gentleman insisted on taking the reins, as he doubted that he would be able to share his duties in the return trip later that night. Katya sat beside him, and Paul and I in back. As we went along the dirt road towards Alos, I looked for signs of dismay in Monsieur Treville at the thought that he would have to uproot his library once again, but as best I could tell, he was in good spirits. His longish silences had more the texture of musing than of brooding. Perhaps he had put it out of his mind for the moment. Or perhaps he had simply forgotten about it.

As though to demonstrate his unique capacity for forgetfulness, he twice allowed the horse to slow almost to a stop; then he looked around with a puzzled frown before, recalling with a start that it was he who was driving, he snapped the reins to get the animal going again.

As we progressed farther up towards the mountains, Katya lifted her face to the sun and breathed deeply and slowly, her eyes half-closed. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to sit tensely on the seat beside me, as though unwilling to relax, as he looked out on the countryside with distaste and mistrust at all this raw nature that was being inflicted on him.

“May I inquire as to our destination?” he asked.

“Alos?” I responded. “Oh, it’s just a little agricultural village. Quite humble. Typically Basque.”

“I hadn’t noticed that humility was typical of the Basque,” he said, letting his eyes settle lazily on me. “Not that they lack every justification for being humble. And how far away is this humble little Basque agricultural village?”

“Nine or ten kilometers as the crow flies.”

“And how far, if the crow has chosen to ride in the back seat of a cart lurching over an uneven dirt road?”

“Oh, about twice that, I should estimate.”

“I see. Twenty kilometers of unrelieved natural beauty attacking us from all sides. How wonderful.”

Katya laughed and turned to us. “Don’t despair, Paul. We’ll break our journey with a lovely picnic.”

“Oh, Good Lord, yes, the picnic! How could I have forgotten the picnic? Is there no end to these pastoral delights? I shall have to protect myself from this glut of pleasure, lest my senses be irremediably cloyed. And have you chosen a suitable site for our jolly picnic?”

“Of course not! It’s an adventure, Paul. One cannot organize an adventure any more than one can rehearse spontaneity. We shall simply go along until we find the perfect spot, and there we shall stop.”

“I see. And how shall we recognize this perfect spot?”

“It will be where we stop.”

Paul turned to me and blinked several times in accurate imitation of his father’s expression when bewildered.

I shrugged. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

“Hm-m. I sense a conspiracy. Very well, sister dear, I accept your notion of an adventure. But I do hope your perfect spot comes along soon. The sooner this feast begins, the sooner it will be done. And it’s always been my philosophy that anything worth doing is worth doing quickly and shoddily. A man must have some rules to live by.”

I laughed. “Oh come now, Paul. Sit back and let all this nature and beauty seep into your soul. Become one with the universe.”

Paul shuddered at the very thought. “It was God’s design to keep Man and Nature apart. It is for this reason that, on the Eighth Day, He said: Let there be windows, doors, shutters, and curtains. And it was so. And He pronounced it good.”

In re-creating this conversation, I seek to make concrete an ineffable tone that permeated the whole afternoon, a tone of hollow humor and impotent camaraderie. Our words had the energy and inflections of entertainment, but the jokes were feeble, maladroit, forced. Each of us sought to keep the outing light and amusing for the sake of the others while, just beneath the surface, our attentions were on troublesome and saddening things. Generous though our motives were, there was something pitifully inept in our execution.