The Summer of Katya (12 page)

“Library?” Monsieur Treville blinked. “What library?”

“I call the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden my library.”

Monsieur Treville shook his head and let his arms flap against his sides. “There you are, Doctor. A perfect example of the source of error in scholarship. Ten thousand years from now some scholar will read her diaries and make the erroneous conclusion that the ancient word for ‘summerhouse’ was ‘library.’ Then he’ll learn that scholars of our era passed most of their time in their libraries, and he’ll deduce that back in the early part of the twentieth century the climate in Europe was semitropical!” He returned to the house muttering, “Thus error breeds error, which breeds error, which breeds…”

Katya looked after him, smiling. “Isn’t he a darling? Don’t you envy him, living as he does on the gentle rim of reality?”

“I like him very much,” I said. “I can’t understand why the two of you think it necessary to pretend that Katya and I are nearly strangers. It isn’t as though your father were some sort of monster.”

Katya glanced at me with a frown.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Paul rose languidly. “I do hope you never consider surgery, Doctor. There’s something lethal in the mindless way you wield a scalpel. Shall we see to these bandages?”

“I doubt your bandages need attention.”

“Nevertheless…” With a gesture he conducted me back into the salon, and I followed him after touching Katya’s shoulder lightly in au revoir. She did not respond.

* * *

As I explored the slightly puffy area around Paul’s clavicle with my fingertips I was surprised that he did not wince with pain. “You seem to be a good healer,” I said.

“I’ve always been that. I’ve had ribs broken and still been able to fight within a week.”

“Fight?”

“Yes, fight. Did I fail to mention that I was once amateur kick-boxing champion of Paris?”

“No, you mentioned it. And I was appropriately impressed.”

“I excelled at the sport, not so much because of my physical attributes as because of my absolute will to win and my capacity for pressing home the attack while others were bungling about with considerations of sportsmanship and fair play.”

“Which considerations never hampered you?”

“Not in the least,” he said with slight emphasis.

“I suppose I’m expected to receive that information on its parabolic level?”

“That would be wise.”

“I see. Well, for all your remarkable recuperative abilities, you’ll have to favor this arm for another week or so.”

Paul slipped back into his shirt without help, managing to rebutton it with some awkwardness.

“Of course, I didn’t ask you here merely to have the benefit of your professional negligence.”

“I assumed as much.”

He stood before me for a moment as though uncertain how to start; then he turned away to a small table from which he took up a handsomely engraved pistol from the barrel of which protruded a metal cleaning rod. Rather clumsily, he held the pistol in his captured right hand and worked the rod in and out slowly, as though his mind were elsewhere.

After a full minute of heavy silence I said, “Well?”

“You know, back in Paris target shooting was a passion of mine. I only gave it up because I had collected all the medals and awards available at my shooting club.”

“I am delighted on your behalf that you found a useful avocation.”

Paul set the pistol down carefully and turned to me, his eyelids heavy with contempt. Once again, I was caught off guard by the astonishing way in which his features, individually considered so like Katya’s, could produce so totally different an effect. Although his cheeks were grey his eyes sunken from his night of drinking, and his mouth was pressed thin and flat, their faces were like the same melody played on different instruments—indeed, in different keys. What in her was a lively and interested intelligence was, in him, bitter wit. What in her was dreamy distance was, in him, cold withdrawal. Yet, although his were the darker tones and hers the more pastel, it was she, not he, who seemed transposed into a minor key; it was her melody that had been taken up by the melancholy split reeds.

He smiled wanly. “I suppose my attitude towards you is revealed by my finding reason to inform you that I am both an expert kick-boxer and an excellent shot.”

“The implications had not escaped me.”

“Good. Let me tell you at the outset that I am furious with you, Montjean. You have acted selfishly, and irresponsibly, and perfidiously.”

“Perfidiously? I resent—”

He held up his hand in an annoyed way, waving away my defense. “Yes, perfidiously. Damn it, man! Although I feared you would bring nothing but pain and trouble, I allowed you to visit here, to be with Katya, to enjoy her company. Then I left you alone for a few minutes yesterday and I returned to find you clutching at her!”

“I would not term it ‘clutching at her.’ “

“I don’t give a damn how you would term it! The fact is, against my better judgment I permitted you to visit the house in the hope that you would be satisfied to be in her company within our family setting—properly. And the next thing I know she’s sneaking off to Salies, and you’re having a tawdry little rendezvous at some cheap caf.”

“Just a moment! I can assure you that—”

“I’m not interested in your assurances! I’m telling you that—”

“You needn’t tell me anything, Treville! It is wrong of you—and cheap—to characterize our having a cup of coffee together as sneaking off for a tawdry little rendezvous. I won’t have it!”

He glared at me. Then he lowered his eyes and drew a long breath. “Yes. Yes, of course. That was stupid phrasing on my part.”

“Indeed it was.” Although I was surprised to hear Paul Treville apologize for anything, I did not intend to let it go at that. “Furthermore, for what it’s worth, I had no idea that Katya intended to come to Salies this morning. It was not a rendezvous. But in all candor I can tell you that if I had known she was coming, I would have been delighted.”

“Very well, let’s pass that point. I am sure you’re right. Katya is an independent and willful woman, and it would be just like her to go to town to see you, even though I had specifically told her not to. But what is even more contemptible than meeting with her in secret away from her home was your meddling in our affairs, scratching around the village for information concerning my activities, then—worst of all—blurting out to Katya my intention to leave this Godforsaken bled, without the slightest concern for the effect such news might have on her! She returned quite shaken, you know.”

“She has a right to know your intentions. Good Lord, it’s her life you’re playing with, not only your own, with all this running from place to place each time the whim takes you!”

“I am not playing with her life. I am not playing at all. I am in deadly earnest. It’s you who are playing, Montjean. Playing the role of the daring lover—the bungling Quixote who doesn’t give a damn who is hurt, so long as his desires are gratified, so long as he can run about scaling walls and rescuing maidens—maidens who do not require and do not desire rescuing!”

“That is still to be seen!”

His eyebrows flashed up. “Oh? Is it really? Has she ever given you the slightest indication that she did not want to stay with her family? That she was unwilling to accept my opinion of what was best for us?”

“Well… not in those words.” Indeed, she had seemed committed to doing whatever Paul thought best. “But I am not sure she knows her own mind in this,” I added weakly.

“But you do? You know her mind? You know what’s best for her? Jesus, man! What gives you the right to interfere in this way?”

“I love her,” I said simply.

Paul did not sneer, as I thought he would. His reaction was yet more devastating. He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and shook his head with fatigue. “You love her. You love her. God protect us from the well-intentioned!” He slumped into a chair across from me and spoke almost to himself. “Because you love her, you assume you have a right to blunder into our lives, causing hurt and harm you cannot even imagine. Because you love her, you are prepared to expose her to pain and shame. You love her! Christ, man, do you imagine I do not love her? Do you think her father doesn’t love her in his vague way?”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Well then?”

“But I am not sure you are considering the effect it has on a young woman, this packing her up and running off whenever the impulse is upon you. What is it you’re running from?”

“That’s not your affair.”

“My feelings for Katya make it my affair.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Your feelings—? Tell me, Montjean, how old do you think Katya is?”

“How old?” The non sequitur question seemed to me to be totally irrelevant.

“Yes. How old.”

“I don’t see that it matters.”

“There’s much you don’t see. I’ll tell you then: Katya is twenty-six.” He smiled faintly. “I’m in a particularly good position to know her age, as I am only fifteen minutes her junior. I am quite sure you took her to be much younger—nineteen or twenty. Everyone does. We inherited from our mother, if I may say it without appearing vain, both our physical beauty and a tendency to remain young-looking.”

“All right, I confess that I thought her to be younger than twenty-six. But I still don’t see—”

“The point is this: At twenty-six, do you suppose that Katya has not attracted the attentions of other young men than you? Can you imagine that you are the first person to be touched by her charm, her spirit, her freshness?”

“Could it be you are jealous of these men?”

His expression hardened. “My dear fellow, if you cannot avoid being stupid, do at least try to conceal it!” He looked away and collected his thoughts. “The point I was attempting to make is that these young men considered themselves to be in love too. They would rather have died than hurt Katya. And yet, they became the agents for great pain and suffering on her part. But of course, you assume you are unique. There is nothing more commonplace than the assumption that one is unique. But believe me when I tell you that you have already caused great pain, and you are in a position to cause even more.”

“I assure you that—”

“You are forever assuring me of something, Montjean! I have no interest in your assurances. I realize that your intentions are of the best. You lack the imagination required to be genuinely evil. Still, you are not going to tell me that your romantic daydreams have not included anticipations of physical delight, are you? Surely you have pictured Katya alone with you and willing, probably in some romantic setting, perhaps in your rooms?”

“That’s an outrage!” I said, recalling with mortification just such imaginings while awaiting Katya in Salies that first rainy afternoon when she came to collect her bicycle.

“It’s not an outrage at all. You’re a healthy young animal. And certainly you weren’t clutching at her yesterday in the garden in order to achieve a more intellectual level of conversation.”

“It is perfectly natural for love between a man and a woman to have its physical manifestations.”

“I am not denying that. I am only pointing out that somewhere in all your noble impulses to save Katya from the machinations of her evil brother, there is an element of desire and self-gratification that may be clouding your ability to judge what is best for her.”

My jaw tightened and I refused to respond.

“And—damn it, man!—the tragicomedy of all this is that you don’t know—could have no way to know—that it isn’t only a matter of your inflicting pain on Katya. You are yourself in considerable danger!”

“Danger of what kind?”

He drew a deep breath and turned away, and I had the impression that he had said more than he intended to.

“Danger from you and your pistol?” I pursued.

He shrugged. “That is a possibility, I suppose. But let us seek a more civilized means of moderating your nuisance. Are you willing to hear my proposals?”

“By all means. But I don’t consider myself in any way bound to accept them.”

“Pity. Well, naturally I considered forbidding you to come again to this house, and forbidding Katya to go into town to see you. But I don’t fancy the image of myself standing guard at the bottom of the lane, my pistol at the half-cock. And furthermore, it might not be effective. Katya is an independent spirit, both imaginative and resourceful. Worse yet, I shouldn’t be surprised if she imagined herself to be in love with you. Oh, do try to keep that insipid smile off your face, Montjean. After all, she fancied herself in love with those other fellows, too. So here is what I suggest. Let us return—and this time with fidelity—to our original arrangement. For the next week, you may visit us—every afternoon, if you must. For my part, I shall do my best to convince Father that your visits have to do with our newfound friendship, and you will cooperate in that deception. Most important, you will not seek to be alone with Katya. I shall have the delicacy to remain out of earshot as much as possible, so you two may exchange thoughts, memories, and cooings—even witticisms, if you’re up to it. But you must promise not to sneak off by yourselves as you did yesterday, and, above all, you must promise to keep your hands off her.”

“I resent phrases like ‘sneak off’ and ‘keep your hands off her.’ They do not describe what happened yesterday accurately, and they are repulsive insinuations.”

He waved my objections aside impatiently. “At all events, you know what I mean. If you agree to these conditions, then Katya will have your company—which, for reasons that escape understanding, she seems to take pleasure in—and you will have seven whole days of her charm and gentleness. I realize of course that you have dreamt of a lifetime of Katya, and I can’t really blame you. The lowly moth dreams of possessing the moon. But seven days is better than nothing. And, believe me,” he enunciated each word clearly, “nothing is your only alternative.” He sat back and pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets to relieve his fatigue.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

“Not quite.” He spoke without opening his eyes. “You must also undertake to assist me in keeping Father in his accustomed state of ignorance as to events around him.”