by Trevanian
“There, you see?” Monsieur Treville said, shaking his head at Paul. “He pretends to make light of everything. But his day will come. His day will come. Yet he does make a telling point in this matter of checking population. There is no doubt that your Great Plague, Jean-Marc, had the effect of making peasant labor rare and valuable, and the agricultural laborer was able to use his newfound worth to raise himself out of serfdom. Great good flowing from great evil. Claude Bonnet made this point quite lucidly in his incisive study of. . . . .”
My attention wandered to Katya, whose features the candlelight touched with a delicate glow. I could see from her vague unfocused eyes that she was adrift from the table talk, her concentration on some inward and pleasant daydream. The curve of her full upper lip fascinated me. I thought of those soft lips against my own, and . . . I glanced at Paul just in time to find his eyes upon me with a studied frown. He looked down at his plate, then up again to his sister, and it seemed to me he was trying to penetrate her musings. I could not avoid a certain resentment at the way Paul had deceived me during that ride to Etcheverria when he had entertained me with imitations of local merchants, while all the time he knew that he had been in town arranging for his family to move away from Salies forever.
He glanced down again, his long lashes concealing his eyes, and I was struck yet again, and this time most uncomfortably, by how identical his face and Katya’s were, particularly in the half-light of the candles.
“. . . . . of course, Claude Bonnet is a fine scholar and a personal friend, so I would never bring this slight lapse of scholarship to his attention. I am sure you understand why, Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc?”
“Sir? Oh, yes. Of course.”
“I knew you would.” Monsieur Treville pushed himself up from the table. “And now . . . I have a treat for you. You’ll never guess what it is.”
“In that case it would be foolish of me to try,” Paul said.
“No, no. It’s a treat for Jean-Marc. In my study. You two go along. We’ll join you later.”
There was a hint of tension in Paul’s tone when he said, “Why don’t we all take coffee together, Papa.”
“No, no, no. I’ve this surprise for your young friend.”
“Can’t we all share it?” Katya asked, casting a troubled look in my direction.
“It wouldn’t be of interest to you, my dear. It’s . . .” He beamed at me with anticipatory relish. “. . . It’s a first edition of de Lanne! What do you say to that, young man?”
“Well . . . I don’t quite know what to say,” I confessed honestly.
“Aha, I’ll wager you never thought you would actually set your eyes on a first edition of the excellent Abbé’s benchmark study of the Great Death. You’ve read it, of course, but to hold a first edition in your hand . . . ah, that’s something, eh?”
“Yes . . . that’s something, indeed. Yes, indeed,” I stammered out. “A first edition! Well, well.”
As he drew me towards his study he confessed that, as I well knew, de Lanne’s work wasn’t of much importance in modern historiography—too liberally larded with myth and folktale, of course—but still there were not half a dozen first editions of the work in existence, and. . . . .
While I examined the calf-bound volume with more signs of interest than I felt, Monsieur Treville beamed at me, participating in what he assumed to be my excitement and delight. I leafed through, pausing now and again at a page and reading a passage with pretended concentration. I even dared the occasional “Ah, yes.”
“In some ways,” he mused, “history was grander before it was infected by impulses towards scientific accuracy. I know this is academic heresy, but I regret the replacement of Literature by Science as Clio’s closest ally. Research has been substituted for imagination; the True has fallen victim to the Actual. Our concentration on What happened and When has cost us insights into How and, more important, Why. Now, de Lanne there was quite free from the shackles of proof, and he . . . and he . . .” His voice faded in midsentence as his eye happened to fall on a bit of scribbled marginalia that captured his attention and drew him down into his padded desk chair, where he was soon comparing notes he had made with passages in two open books, absorbed and quite unaware of my presence.
The study, an interior room protected from the rising damp that made most of Etcheverria clammy and uncomfortable, was the coziest room in the house. Its walls were lined with bookcases, and volumes were piled on the floor together with manuscripts and journals and loose pages filled with Monsieur Treville’s spidery scrawl. Open books, clippings, and stacks of paper slumped in impertinent defiance of gravity on his cluttered desk in a kind of creative disarray that gave the impression that he could quickly locate any reference or note he wanted, provided his system of discriminate disorder was not ruined by being tidied up.
I found myself observing him fondly over the top of my book . . . Katya’s father . . . as he pored over his reading, frowning and making little grunts of doubt or hums of agreement, nervously dragging his fingers through his nest of unkempt grey hair. After a time he looked up vaguely, reeling in some thread of thought, and he was visibly startled to see me standing there. Then a smile of recognition brightened his worn features. “Fascinating book, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Fascinating.”
“I love the feel of an old book in the hand, don’t you? The smell of them. Aroma of learning.” He chuckled and gestured broadly towards his desk. “I’ll never finish it, of course. Not enough time left to me. But that doesn’t matter really. The attraction doesn’t lie in the accomplishment, but in the pursuit. The work. Have you ever pondered upon the way in which Time comes to us in so many disguises? For me, time is sand sifting through my fingers. Not enough of it. Can’t seem to grasp hold of it. While for my son, time is a heavy burden of boredom around his neck, something to be got rid of, something to be got through.
“And for Katya?”
“Ah, Katya . . . she who was once Hortense. So like her mother.” His work-stained eyes crinkled in an affectionate smile. “I sometimes wonder if Katya lives in the same web of time as the rest of us do. It’s all daydreams for her . . . smiles and spring flowers . . . fleeting fascinations. I often have the impression that she’s a temporary visitor from some other world. Some distant pastel world. So like her mother.”
“I believe I know what you mean, sir. But it’s not that she’s frivolous or shallow. Her observations are often quite incisive, and she has an excellent mind.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” He chuckled. “Do you know, I once found her studying anatomy. Human anatomy!”
“Yes, I know.”
His smile of paternal benevolence dissolved into a frown. “You know? How do you know?”
I shrugged it off. “Oh, she mentioned it in passing. Or perhaps Paul did. I don’t recall.”
“Oh, yes, I see.” He seemed to drift into thoughts of his own for a moment; then he said, “It feels good to have things all in order again.”
“Sir?”
He waved towards the piles of paper slumping on his desk. “For six months after we arrived here, I couldn’t find a thing. Everything was in boxes or in the wrong place. It was primordial chaos. I don’t believe my studies could survive another such debacle. I am comfortable here now. Books are where they belong, next to the books I want them next to, arranged in an order that only I know . . . two books purchased on the same rainy afternoon . . . two ideas that happen to be stacked one behind the other in the attic of my mind . . . opposing views set side by side . . . a book I like kept at an antiseptic distance from one I dislike—not a system the Bibliothèque Nationale would approve, I daresay, but one that suits me perfectly.”
I wondered how he would face the disruption of moving yet again, when Paul deigned to inform him of his decision. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “In my own mind, certain medical facts are bound, illogically but forever, to certain swatches of verse for the simple reason that I learned them at the same ti
me. And often, when I want to dredge up a bit of information I must first scan through the intervening poem.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” He was pleased to find another mind in which the clutter had shape and purpose. He nodded to himself; then he squinted up at me with an evaluating, conspiratorial expression. “You, ah . . . you mentioned this afternoon that you were born in the commune of Alos and were familiar with their Festival of the Drowned Virgin.”
“I used to attend every year before I went off to school. Everyone in my village did.”
“Fascinating. Fascinating. Ah . . . it is a three-day fête beginning tomorrow, I believe?”
“Tomorrow?” I had to search my memory. “Why, yes. It does begin tomorrow, come to think of it.”
“And Alos is not so very far from here, I believe?”
I smiled at him. “Only twenty kilometers or so up into Haute Soule.”
He nodded. “Yes . . . yes. I’d give anything to observe with my own eyes the Parade of the Virgin and the performance of Robert le Diable . . . to talk to old people who remember how the festival used to be celebrated. Of course . . . I don’t speak Basque . . . and they might be reticent with an outsider. Now you, on the other hand . . . a native of the region . . . ?”
“Sir, nothing could please more than to attend the fête d’Alos with you.”
His eyes widened with innocence. “Oh, my dear fellow, I couldn’t dream of taking you from your duties at the clinic! No, no, you mustn’t think I was hinting that—”
“Sir, I have been seeking an excuse to go back to my natal commune after all the years away. Also, I have been seeking a way to repay some of your kindness and hospitality to me. It is very thoughtful of you to provide me with an opportunity to do both at the same time.”
“Oh? Is that so? Well . . .” He smiled broadly. “. . . If you insist on abandoning your duties in this profligate way . . .”
“I do, sir.”
“Grand! Grand!” He rose from his desk. “Let’s join the children for coffee. They’ll be pleased to hear that we are to have an outing. An adventure!”
I could not help wondering just how pleased Paul would be to find himself in the midst of the dancing and jostling and drinking and rowdiness that is the fabric of a Basque festival. I confess to feeling a certain unkind pleasure at the image of Paul attempting to maintain his aloof aplomb in such circumstances.
Before following Monsieur Treville from his study, I balanced the first edition on the toppling heap on his desk.
“No, no. Keep it. It’s yours. A gift from one scholar to another.”
“Oh, I couldn’t sir. It’s too valuable.”
“Nonsense. Accept it as a little token.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I am more pleased than I can say that you and Paul have become such friends. He is too much alone. And anyway, the Black Death is only a tangent aspect of my studies, while it is the very core of yours. The book is yours by Right of Need. I shall be angry with you if you do not accept it.”
TO this day, I have the old calf-bound volume on my desk; never read; the only physical memento of the summer of Katya.
WHEN we joined them in the salon, Paul and Katya were sitting together before the hearth, so involved in conversation that the untouched coffee had gone cold in their cups. From their slightly too vigorous greetings I took it that they had been talking about me, perhaps concerned lest I forget my promise to conceal from their father that Katya was the object of my interest in Etcheverria. I sought to set their minds at ease by showing them the book and describing in unnecessary detail the things Monsieur Treville and I had discussed.
I was surprised at Paul’s reaction to the news that we were all to embark tomorrow on an outing. With the first mention of it, he measured me with a long glance, as though wondering what deviousness I was up to. But Monsieur Treville’s childlike enthusiasm soon infected Katya, who decided that the trip should be broken by a picnic, and Paul went along with the proposal, amusing us by assuming the role of the grumpy, put-upon one who detested all outings and all alfresco dining.
The evening ended with Katya and Paul entertaining us with descriptions of pranks they had played as children—quite outrageous antics that Monsieur Treville disavowed any knowledge of. He pretended to be shocked at their disrespect for adults and relatives as he beamed at me and shook his head with that helpless admiration of the doting parent. The pranks had been based on the inability of houseguests to tell them apart when they were children and often dressed in the androgynous costumes then fashionable.
Towards the end of the evening, it was decided that we would depart for Alos one day thence, early in the morning so we could break our trip with Katya’s picnic and still arrive in time for the afternoon and evening festivities. Twenty kilometers would make a long ride back, and we would not return to Etcheverria until the small hours of the morning, but Katya was as excited as a child at the prospect of being up late into the night and riding in an open cariole under the brilliant midnight stars of that perfect summer.
Monsieur Treville grew sleepy and began to nod in his chair by the time I rose to leave. Paul invited me to come again tomorrow for tea after I had finished my duties at the clinic, and he was gracious enough to allow Katya and me a moment alone at the door, where we exchanged the simple words of polite parting with a softness of voice that implied more than it said. Katya placed her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Jean-Marc.”
“For what?”
“For arranging this outing with Papa. It will help to soften the blow of having to move again.”
“I don’t think of this as an outing with your father. I think of it as an outing with you. And for that, it’s I who give thanks.”
She lowered her eyes and pressed my arm.
AS I walked back to Salies under a Prussian-blue sky of velvet alive with gemstars, a pervious heaven, I pondered the contrasts of the evening at Etcheverria: the gay chatter at dinner, over against Paul’s dark warnings; the facile joy Katya took in little things, in puns and pebbles, against her sudden retreats into melancholy reverie; the fumbling kindness of Monsieur Treville, against the fear his children had that he might learn of my affection for Katya. It was a canvas painted half in watery pastels, half in lurid impasto. And I had the disturbing conviction that it was the pastels that were artificial, a thin wash to cover more foreboding textures.
Upon reaching my rooms, I found a note from Doctor Gros under my door telling me that he had tried to contact me and that I must visit him at once in his flat attached to the clinic. When I arrived he was obviously annoyed at having sought me without success, but his annoyance was nothing to mine when I discovered he intended to leave the village for two days, and I would have to remain in Salies on call for emergencies until his return.
“But I have made plans that will be awkward to change,” I complained. “Is this trip of yours absolutely vital?”
“It is more than absolutely vital; it’s a matter of pleasure-seeking,” he said, offering me a brandy which I waved away. “One of my dear lady patients has requested that I accompany her to St. Jean de Luz. She’s a widow who takes the cures at various watering places for the purpose of mitigating the discomforts of her celibate state. Under normal conditions, nothing would please me more than to leave you free to pursue your pleasures, unencumbered by duty, but unfortunately some years ago I took a solemn vow abjuring all impulses to waste such sexual opportunities as come my way. Think of me as a victim of Honor, unable to break an oath. And think of yourself as a victim of circumstance. You’re sure you won’t have a little glass?”
“Couldn’t I attend to the clinic during the day and be free in the evenings at least?”
“I’m afraid not, Montjean. Oh, if it were only our lady patients with their hot flashes and cold hearts, I wouldn’t care one way or the other. But, with me away, you will be the only doctor in the parish, and we do have our share of genuine problems—our births, our broken bones, our distressed livers, the occasional
miraculous pregnancy of an unmarried milkmaid. It all has to do with that oath of yours. Surely you remember it . . . so recently taken. Did I forget to offer you some brandy?”
“I don’t want any,” I said bitterly.
“Oh, cheer up, man! What’s two days to you, a youth whose primary asset in life is Time? If you look at it just right, I am more to be pitied than you. I shall be embarking only on a tawdry little affair; while you, if I do not misread the symptoms, are in the throes of love. Believe me, young man, you have no grounds for envy. You will be left with fertile memories; I shall be left with only a strong urge to bathe.”
“Yes, but—”
“Perhaps I should put it this way: I intend to leave tomorrow morning, and there’s no point in our debating the matter.”
Lacking alternative, and with a minimal display of good graces, I agreed to attend to the clinic and to remain in the village until his return. But I extracted his promise to pass by Etcheverria on his way and explain why I would not be able to take tea with them that day, or attend the fête d’Alos the next.
“A commission I shall undertake with pleasure. But a sense of fair play requires me to warn you that, once your young woman casts her eyes on my virile features, untrammelled by beauty or even conventional regularity, I cannot be held accountable for her heart. You’re sure you won’t have a little glass?”
THE following day I was harnessed to the routine of the clinic, including a visit to the watering station in Doctor Gros’s stead. His tourist/patients were not delighted to find the crusty old doctor with whom they could share their giggling little double entendres replaced by a young man who appeared crisp and unsympathetic to their imagined maladies.
Late that afternoon the featureless routine was broken by the dramatic arrival of a Basque peasant lad who had caught his sleeve in a farm machine. I was able to staunch the bleeding and save the arm, and I received the tearful gratitude of the panicked mother and even a reluctant handshake from the taciturn father, who, having watched the operation in grim and desperate silence until he was sure the boy was out of danger, then manifest his love and relief by being furious with the lad for risking so precious a life. Because the mother had no French, I had spoken to them in Basque, and I could sense their discomfort at the realization that this doctor was one of them. Like most proud and oppressed minorities, the Basque have developed a defensive armour of racial superiority requiring them to assert that the Basques are better farmers, dancers, lovermakers, fighters, and predictors of weather than the French or Spanish majorities amongst whom they live. But, at the same time, when it comes to important matters like lawsuits or illness, they cannot avoid a deep feeling that it would be wiser to have their affairs and lives in the hands of a cultured outlander. The most brutalizing effect of prejudice is that the victims come to believe, at a deep and unconfessed level, the stereotypes established by the oppressor. For this reason, the father of the injured boy was all the more relieved when it became clear that his son’s life was to be spared and his usefulness around the farm undiminished. He went so far as to offer me a glass of Izarra, although his peasant wariness made him ask how much I intended to steal from him for this slight medical attention.