by Trevanian
“My dear fellow, it wasn’t a matter of punishing him. It was a matter of humiliating him. I know their type: second generation arrivés merchants imitating the accents and behavior of their betters (people like me) but lacking the innate panache to pull it off. Paris is full of them. And humiliating them is a popular indoor sport with men of my class. So far as punishment goes, I had already accomplished that. I rearranged certain features of the motorcar they were so proud of.”
“Yes. We saw the effects of your repairs.”
“Hm-m. Well, I confess to having no technical gifts. But I left them all the bits, so they could have someone more skillful correct any little errors I may have made.”
“You devil!” Katya said, and again the reproval was mock. Then she put her hand on my arm. “Did you know that Jean-Marc spoke out and prevented your little display from becoming what we call a ‘bagarre basque.’”
“What we call a ‘bagarre’?” Paul taunted. He turned to me. “Was that you shouting out in that comic imitation of a language?”
“It was.”
“Ah, I see. When I saw those belt buckles flashing out of the corner of my eye, I thought for a moment I was for it. I suppose it was a good thing for me that those young buffoons were also outlanders.”
“Indeed it was.”
Having taken advantage of Paul’s distraction to refresh themselves at one of the bars, the band now struck up a high-tempo Kax Karot, and soon there were twenty or more couples dancing and leaping in the square. Most of the candles in the paper lanterns had guttered out, but the dented moon high above filled the square with its pallid light.
Paul rose and offered his hand to Katya. “Are you willing to join your brother in this primitive hopping about?”
She stood and dropped a little curtsy. “We call it a Kax Karot.”
“Oh we do, do we? You will excuse us, Doctor?”
They joined the general swirl of dancers, where Paul’s strong legs, trained in kick-boxing, stood him in good stead when the challenge lines formed to leap against one another. As I watched them I was struck anew by how much they resembled one another, not only in appearance, but in energy and articulation, in idioms of body movement.
It occurred to me that this would be a good time to look in on Monsieur Treville, who might well have been seduced into drinking more than was his wont by his company of old Basque peasants. I found him sitting in the same bar, now much less crowded in result of a continuous drain of people from the fête to their farms. A nearly full bottle of Izarra was on the table from which not one of the old men had stirred. Can one imagine a Basque leaving a place where the Izarra is free? I hoped that not too many bottles of that insidious liqueur had preceded this one. The flow of talk had reversed, and Monsieur Treville now held forth on some arcane topic that none of the Basque men seemed to be following very closely. But that did not diminish the energy of his monologue until he caught sight of me at the door and gestured for me to join them at the table, where he introduced me around. I was surprised that he remembered each of the men’s names and even pronounced them fairly accurately. Save for a convivial shine in his eyes, he seemed not much the worse for drink and therefore in no great danger of being bilked out of more Izarra than he chose to buy, so I felt free to return to Katya and Paul, but I could not leave without a full round of formal handshaking. One of the old men recognized my name and told me that he had known one of my uncles rather well, so I must have a little glass of Izarra with him (clearly, the bottle had become communal property, a gift from God). Seizing the opportunity for rounds of toasts, another of the peasants revealed that he had once shared a high mountain pasture with my mother’s cousin and therefore must insist that I have a glass with him as well.
I drank down my second glass then jokingly asked if any of them had owned a sheepdog bred from a bitch owned by my uncle’s cousin’s son, and therefore felt the need to offer a toast. The oldest of the men knew my meaning exactly, and his eyes glittered with conniving humor as he said, “No offense to your family, young man, but we must face the fact that your uncle’s cousin’s son’s dogs were not of the best bloodline; therefore toasting them with a round might be a greedy waste of Izarra.”
I grinned back at him and nodded, taking delight in the tortuous subtleties of the Basque mind. What I had really said was: Don’t take excessive advantage of this generous friend of mine. And what the old man had really said was: Who would do such a thing?
How can such a language be translated?
When I returned to the square I saw Katya dancing a slow passo with the young jai alai player she had danced with before. As they passed by, the young man smiled and nodded to me in a way that said he understood this woman to be mine and was not going to contest the point. I smiled and gestured with my thumb to my mouth, inviting him to take a glass with me later. He nodded again and they danced away. Perhaps it was the Izarra, but I felt closer to and fonder of my Basque heritage at that moment than I had for years, and I had a twinge of shame for having worked so hard to lose my accent and disavow my background to avoid ridicule at university. Of course, I could not have known that eventually I would return from the war to pass my entire life as that village’s doctor.
As I drifted around the rim of onlookers, I saw Paul dancing with an attractive Basque girl who was faintly familiar to me, but it didn’t dawn on me for several minutes that she was the one who had played the role of the Drowned Virgin. I had a momentary worry about Paul’s taking the girl who was considered the village belle, as I had no appetite for ending up back to back with Paul in a melée of whistling belt buckles. But he had the good sense to lead her back to a group of her friends after the dance, and to treat her with a distant and comically overdone politeness that earned him an invitation to join them in a round.
During the next hour, I danced several times with Katya; and once with somebody’s grandmother; and once with somebody’s spinster aunt. And Katya danced with an adolescent boy who had been pushed towards her, blushing and stammering, by his friends; and she danced with an old man somewhat asea with wine, who grinned and waved at all his friends to make sure they noticed his bold conquest; and once again with the young jai alai player after the three of us had taken a glass of wine together. Paul did not dance again, but he was taken on a triumphant txikiteo of the bars by a knot of young men who insisted that he must have some Basque blood in him, to be able to fight so well. When next I saw him he had lost his cravat somewhere.
After one last Kax Karot, the musicians descended from their platform, and the fête was over, save for the early-morning omelette the young men would share at a nearby farmhouse. Katya and I found Paul, and the three of us went to the bar where their father had been ensconced all evening long. Just as we entered, the old men began to sing “Agur Jaunak,” the final song of any Basque fête, their strained falsetto voices trembling with emotion and age. I joined in the plaintive melody, surprised and a bit embarrassed to find tears standing in my eyes.
Monsieur Treville had not survived the Izarra quite as well as I had thought, as we discovered walking across the square towards the bridge. Twice he stumbled and complained about the uneven cobblestones that made it hard for a person to keep his balance.
“What did your cronies have to say about Paul’s exhibition?” Katya asked, putting her arm around her father as though in affection, but really to steady him.
“What exhibition was that?” Monsieur Treville asked with a confused frown.
“Never mind,” Paul said. And he pretended to stumble. “Damn these cobblestones!”
Just as we crossed the bridge there came a cri basque from the square behind us followed by shouts and sounds of scuffling.
“Ah,” I said. “I had begun to fear the fête would have to do without one.”
“Without one what?” Monsieur Treville asked.
“Without its bagarre. It’s a time-honored tradition.”
Monsieur Treville stopped in his tracks. “A trad
ition? Let’s go back and join in!”
“Oh, let’s not, Papa,” Paul said. “We’ve had enough of rural customs and traditions for one night.”
“Oh, perhaps so . . . perhaps so.” Monsieur Treville’s voice was heavy with sudden fatigue.
But he regained his spirits as we drove away down the dirt road that seemed to glow in the moonlight. I had taken my turn at the reins, and he sat in back with Paul, regaling us with the curious and fascinating bits of folklore he had learned until, almost in midthought, he stopped speaking. I turned to discover that he had fallen asleep on his son’s shoulder. Paul smiled and shook his head as he adjusted his father’s coat to keep out the night air.
During the two hours of the slow ride back to Etcheverria no one spoke; the only sound was the clop of the horse’s hooves in the dust, and the rattle of the trap as it swayed over the uneven road like a small boat wending down a stream of moonlight bordered by dark silhouettes of river grasses. Katya did not rest against my shoulder, though I offered it. She seemed pleasantly alone and isolated in wisps of daydream and memory. Twice she softly hummed snatches of the melodies she had danced to, both times the tune fading away as some vagrant reverie carried her thoughts adrift.
It was not until I had turned into the poplar lane leading up to Etcheverria that Monsieur Treville awoke with a little start and asked where we were.
“We’re home, Papa,” Paul said.
“Home? Really? We’ve come home?” There was bewildered excitement in his voice, before he realized that “home” meant the house in the Basque country. “Oh, I see,” he said in a rather deflated tone.
I let them off at the door and drove around to the stable to unharness and attend to the horse. A quarter of an hour passed before I returned, by which time Monsieur Treville had gone up to his room, and Paul and Katya were sitting in the salon with only one lamp lit and no fire in the hearth.
“Papa wished you a good night,” Paul said. “And he asked me to thank you for bringing us to the fête.”
“Yes,” Katya added, “I don’t remember when he enjoyed himself so much. It was good of you, Jean-Marc.” The words had the vacant sound of social rote, and she appeared worried and distant.
Paul rose. “Well, I think I shall go up myself.” He stifled a yawn. “I do hope the bad wine I’ve drunk will counteract any beneficial effects of all this vulgar exercise. Don’t keep her up too late, Montjean.” He laid his hand on Katya’s shoulder. “I’ve told Katya that you know all about Papa and his . . . problem. And I’ve asked her to listen to what you have to say before making up her mind whether she wants to go with us or stay.”
Katya’s eyes were lowered and her bodily attitude seemed heavy and burdened.
Paul held out his left hand to me. “I suppose I shan’t be seeing you again, Montjean. I would like to say that meeting you has been an undiluted pleasure, but you know me: helpless slave to the truth.” With a little wave he disappeared up the staircase.
That was the last time I saw Paul alive.
I turned to Katya, who continued to avert her eyes. All the energy and joy of life she had exhibited at the fête seemed drained from her. After a moment of silence, I began, “Katya—”
“—It really was good of you to treat us to this day, Jean-Marc.” She spoke in a rush, as though to distract me from my purpose by a barrage of words. “Papa had such a good time, while only this morning his heart was heavy with the thought that he would have to move his books again and disturb the special chaos he thrives on. The picnic . . . the fête . . . this has been a day to remember. I hope you don’t intend to spoil it all now.”
“Look at me, Katya.”
“I can’t . . . I . . .” I could see tears standing in her averted eyes.
I drew a sigh. “Shall we walk down to the summerhouse?”
“If you wish.” She rose, still avoiding my eyes, and went before me out through the terrace doors.
She sat in the broken wicker chair beneath the lattice of the summerhouse, and I leaned against the entrance arch. A cold moonlight slanted through the dense foliage, blotting the ground with patches of black and silver, and a night breeze was sibilant in the trees above us.
After a moment of silence, I began, “I want to talk about your father.”
She did not respond.
“I am sure you don’t really want to leave here . . . to leave me.”
She spoke in a quiet atonal voice. “Wanting has nothing to do with it. I have no choice.”
“That’s not true. You do have a choice, and you must make it. Perhaps Paul no longer has a choice. His appetite for life is slight anyway. But you, Katya . . . when I saw you dance . . . the way you looked when you walked back from the riverbank with your arms full of wildflowers . . . Katya, the joy of living is in every fiber of you!”
“I can’t leave my father! Paul and I . . . we’re responsible for Papa. We can never repay our debt to him.”
“That is nonsense. All children believe they’re eternally indebted to their parents, but that’s not true. If there is any debt, it’s the parent who should repay the child for bringing it into this world of pain and war and hatred, just for a moment’s gratification.”
“It’s different in our case. Papa loved our mother terribly—”
“Madly?”
She ignored this. “He was wholly devoted to her. She was his life, his happiness. She was a very beautiful woman, very delicate. Too delicate, really. Her body was slight and fragile . . . and we were twins. The birth was a difficult one. Either the mother could be saved, or the babies. So that Paul and I might live, Papa had to lose the thing he loved most . . . his world. How could we desert him now?”
I did not want to expose her to a painful truth, but everything was at stake. “Katya? I know about the young man in Paris.”
“Yes. Paul told me he had been forced to tell you about it.”
“‘Forced’ isn’t quite accurate, but let that pass. The fact is, I know what happened in Paris better than even you do. This won’t be pleasant to hear, but you must know the truth if you are to make an intelligent decision. Paul led you to believe that your father shot the young man by—”
“—You are going to tell me that the accident was not an accident, aren’t you,” she said calmly.
“You know?”
Her head still bowed, her eyes still on her folded hands, she said, “I’ve known from the beginning. I was standing outside the door to Father’s study when Paul talked to him that next morning. It isn’t nice to listen at doors, but I was desperate to know what to do, how to protect Father . . . not only from punishment, but from the realization of what he had done. When I heard Paul tell him that I had shot the young man, I was bewildered and terrified. He was lying, of course—I can tell when Paul is lying; there’s a certain hearty sincerity in his voice that is a sure giveaway. In fact, the only time he sounds sincere is when he’s lying. Then suddenly I understood what he was doing; he had thought of a way to make Father confess to his act without making him face the horrible truth of his insanity. Later that morning Paul came to me and we had a long talk. I expected him to confess the fiction he had used to protect Father. But instead, he told me that Father had shot Marcel by accident, mistaking him for an intruder. Once again, Paul spoke with that serious, sincere tone that signaled a lie. And once again, I understood what he was doing. He was trying to protect me from knowing that Father was mad.”
I pressed my fingertips against my forehead, trying to comprehend this tapestry of lies and half-truths. “And all this time Paul has believed that you accepted his story of the accidental shooting?”
“Yes.” For the first time, she looked into my eyes, a faint sad smile on her lips. “So you see, by pretending to believe Paul’s story, I am lying too, in a way. All three of us are lying, each to protect the others from the truth.”
“And you alone know that truth?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you know the whole trut
h? Do you know why your father shot the young . . . this Marcel?”
“I believe so. I have considered it a great deal, and I believe I understand. There was the staggering shock of my mother’s death. There were the years of concealing his grief beneath a heavy schedule of study, of trying to insulate his pain with work. And all that time, the unexpressed grief festered within him. Then one night at an unguarded and vulnerable moment . . . perhaps he had been thinking about her, sitting in his study and remembering . . . perhaps weeping. He stepped into the garden for a breath of air . . . he saw his wife in the arms of another man . . . I look very much like my mother, you know. Yes, Jean-Marc, I think I know what happened.”
“Then you must realize that the feelings he has for you are morbid. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“They’re not feelings for me. They’re feelings for his wife.”
“They’re morbid all the same. And there is no reason in the world to believe he won’t break again, won’t kill another young man whose only crime is loving you and holding you in his arms.”
“Exactly! And that is why we must leave here, Jean-Marc! Don’t you see?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “But you mustn’t leave! I mustn’t lose you! I love you, for God’s sake!” I stopped short at hearing myself say the words so violently. Then I repeated softly, “I love you, Katya.”
Her eyes searched my face with concern; then she gazed out over the moonlit garden as she seemed to ponder some inner puzzle. When she spoke, after a long silence, it was with a distant voice. “I am twenty-six years old, Jean-Marc. Twenty-six years old. My mother died when she was just twenty. It’s a very strange feeling to be older than your mother. Think of it. I am six years older than my . . .” Her voice trailed off into reverie.
“Katya? There’s something I must ask you. I believe I already know the answer, because a person in love is sensitive to the one he loves and can read all the little signs and hints. But you’ve never said it in so many words. Katya . . . do you love me?”