by Trevanian
“Your father was still alive at that time?”
“Yes. He was still in his study, writing. It wasn’t until Paul returned that he found him. Dead by his own hand. And he—”
“What? Paul returned to find him?”
Her eyes flickered. She drew a quick breath but continued airily, “Yes, I found him when I returned from bringing you to the clinic at Salies. I carried him up to his bedroom so that Katya wouldn’t blunder in and discover him looking . . . with the side of his face all . . . Afterwards, I searched for her everywhere, and at last I found her sitting in her wicker chair in the summerhouse—sitting here just as I am—and I knew at first glance that something had ruptured in her mind when she shot you, allowing all the terrible, insupportable truth to rush in. She remembered everything. The rape of Hortense. Killing poor Marcel. And she told me all about it, calmly, succinctly . . . almost clinically.”
“But, Paul, listen. Try to understand this. If she can remember all of it, then there’s a chance for her to recover! Don’t you see that? With time and professional help, she might be able to live a full life with someone who loves her!”
But she closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. The floodgates to all that pain and horror opened for only a moment . . . a confusing and horrible moment . . . but even as she described events to me, the details began to grow fuzzy . . . distorted. The shock of seeing you on the ground, of thinking you were dying, opened the old wounds for a moment, but the searing rush of agonizing memories cauterized them again, sealing the flow, closing them . . . but not healing them.” She looked at me, her eyes sad and gentle, and she spoke in her own voice. “She had wanted so desperately to protect you from a danger she sensed but did not understand. She even told you that she did not love you, hoping to drive you away, keep you safe. Can you imagine what pain it must have cost her to look into your eyes . . . those black Basque eyes . . . and tell you that she did not love you?” The hint of a minor-key smile touched the corners of her eyes as they looked into mine for a long affectionate moment. Then her expression hardened, and when she spoke it was in Paul’s harsh voice. “Then quite suddenly, while she was trying to explain to me why she had been forced to shoot you—vague, shattered babble about your having made her feel evil, shameful pleasure . . . and something about the rape . . . and some incoherent business about eyes squirting like grapes from their skins—quite suddenly she turned on me, shrieking and beating her fists against my chest. She accused me of stealing her place in the world! Of being born a man, invulnerable to rape, when it was she who should have been born the man! After all, she was older! She screamed out at the injustice of it! And she used words I didn’t know she had ever heard, words that would have made a dock worker blush. She struggled violently against my efforts to hold her in my arms, and she tried to hit me in the face with her fists, all the while sobbing, ‘I should have been the brother! I should have been the boy!’ Then, worn out and empty of hate, she sagged in my arms. And when she lifted her head and I saw her face, stained with spent fury, the eyes wild and haunted, I knew . . . I knew the flood of memories had passed and were lost forever from the light. Katya was gone. As Hortense had gone before her. She wrenched herself free from my grasp and ran up to the house. Katya was gone, Montjean . . . gone.” Tears filled Katya’s eyes and her lips trembled. She was weeping silently for the lost Hortense; and Paul was weeping for the lost Katya.
I remained silent until the tears stopped flowing and she sat, staring out across the overgrown garden, her lashes still wet, indifferent to the tear streaks on her soft cheeks.
“You followed her to the house, Paul?”
She looked at me with an expression between bewilderment and annoyance, as though surprised to find me there. “What?”
“You followed Katya to the house?”
She nodded. “Yes . . . yes . . .” She drew a long, fatigued sigh.
“And . . . ?”
“It occurred to me in a flash that she might find Father’s body, with his face all . . . missing, you know. The shock of it might . . . Oh, Jesus! I burst into the house after her, calling her name. As I ran into the hall, I saw her. She was standing on the landing of the stairs. In her hand was the pistol I had brought up to Father’s room when I carried him to his bed. She looked down at me . . . cold yet desperate eyes. And, Montjean—Jean-Marc—she had done something very strange, very frightening. . . .” She stopped speaking abruptly, and she sat stiff and unmoving.
The sun had slipped low in the sky, and patterns of leaf dapple over her face covered one eye with a patch of dark shadow, while the other stared dully ahead. The vision scurried eddies of fear down my spine.
“What was it, Paul? What had she done that was so frightening?”
She frowned and shook her head, her eyes clouded and confused. “I don’t understand it. I looked down on her and realized that . . . that she had somehow . . .”
“You looked down on her? But she was on the landing, wasn’t she, and you were below in the hall.”
“No. No. You see, that was the hideous thing she had done! She had somehow . . .”
Her eyes searched the space before them, as though trying to see the events again, trying to understand them.
“She . . . she burst into the hall, calling out her own name. Then she saw me standing on the landing, and she looked up at me with fear in her eyes, as though I was going to harm her! And, Montjean . . . she was wearing my clothes. She was pretending to be me! Why, she even—Christ, it was ghastly!—she had even cut her hair! I had just come from finding Father on his bed . . . horrible . . . ugly. I had the pistol in my hand, and she stared up at it, as though I intended to shoot her. Then suddenly it became clear to me what she was trying to do. Poor dear! Poor lost Katya was trying to find someplace to hide, someplace to flee to. Years before, she had learned the trick of surviving by dying. She had become Katya, and allowed the soiled, ruined Hortense to die. But now she could no longer be Katya. She knew now that Katya was mad, that Katya had killed the young man in Paris, that Katya had shot you down in the garden because you had made her feel disgusting, shameful pleasure! And when we were children, we used to play tricks on visitors, pretending both to be the same person, to be two places at once. Poor Katya was trying desperately to survive! She was trying to become me! She had no other place to go! But what was to happen to me, Montjean? If Katya became me, where was I to go? For God’s sake! It wasn’t my fault that I had been born the boy!
“I stood on the staircase looking down at her, horrified that she had changed into my clothes and cut her hair. Then a terrible thought occurred to me. Dreading what I knew I would discover, I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing her white dress! How had she done that to me, Montjean? How is it possible? Then I reached up and touched my hair. It was her hair, Montjean! Her hair! She had made my hair long and had done it up in a bun, so everyone would think I was the woman! I didn’t want to be the woman! I didn’t want to be raped! My eyes throbbed, as though someone were pressing his fingers into them! No! No! Then, something became perfectly clear to both of us at the same instant. There was no place in the world for both of us. Only one of us could survive. We loved one another. We were brother and sister. But only one of us could survive. She raised the gun slowly and pointed it at Katya. I looked up at her. I understood what had to be. I smiled and nodded. I looked down at her. I understood what had to be. I smiled and nodded. Then she . . . then I squeezed the trigger and . . . shot herself.”
Katya pressed her fingertips against her forehead hard, until the fingers trembled with strain and white dents appeared on her brow; then she raked her fingers back through her cropped, matted hair.
“Oh, God, Montjean! I took her head into my lap. She looked so strange and pitiful with her hair cut short in that way. Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled up at me faintly. Then there was a terrible gurgling sound at the back of her throat! I pressed her face into my chest and begged her not to die! I kissed her! Then she stiffen
ed . . . there was foam on her lips! And she . . .” Katya’s eyes searched mine, desperately seeking understanding. “Poor Hortense was finally dead, Monjean. But . . . but . . . I couldn’t leave her there, of course. People would come. They would see poor Katya looking silly and queer in my clothes with her hair cut like a man’s. They would say ugly things about her. I had to carry her up to her room. It was so hard! She was so heavy! Limp and boneless, in a way. I managed to put her onto her bed, and I made her look nice again. She was a handsome woman, you know. Not beautiful perhaps, but handsome. I put one of her dresses over her so she would look nice again. It wasn’t until I passed her mirror that I recalled with a sickening shock what she had done to me. The dress she had made me wear was all stained with her blood. And my hair . . . ! I changed into my own clothes and cut my hair—I don’t think I did a very good job of it. After all, old fellow, I’m not a barber. Then I stepped back out into the hall and . . . you were there. You were alive! Oh, Jean-Marc, I am so happy you’re alive! I’m so happy she didn’t kill you!”
The tears flowed down her cheeks. I took her into my arms and held her tightly, my eyes squeezed shut, my cheek pressed against hers, as her body racked with painful sobs.
In her final struggle to remember as Katya and to understand as Paul she had spoken an unearthly dialogue, her voice shifting in and out of the ugly guttural rasp that was Paul. The effort had sapped her strength, and now she rested her weight against me as the sobs resided and her panicked breathing slowed and calmed. I held her and rocked her gently in my arms. One of her tears found its way to the corner of my mouth. I can taste the warm salt to this day.
Then she stiffened in my arms and pulled away, and when I looked into her amused, metallic eyes, I knew she was Paul now . . . and forever.
She turned from me and smoothed down her hair with the palm of her hand. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with quick, impatient gestures; then she laughed three mirthless notes and turned to settle her cool, superior eyes on me. “Taken all in all, old fellow, we’ve had quite an exciting couple of hours around here. Pity you missed it.”
The hoarse voice, the smirking tone, the sardonic shallow smile in the eyes. Yes, Katya was quite, quite gone.
I took a deep breath and spoke, my voice husky with tears. “What . . . what are you going to do now, Paul?”
“Oh, come, old fellow, what options have I? It’s obvious that Katya’s suicide will be set to my account. After all, let’s face it, it’s not the most believable story in the world. And it wouldn’t be the guillotine for me. Nothing that tidy.” She chuckled. “I’m sure that if Katya were here she’d be unable to resist a pun about ‘losing one’s head.’ No, it wouldn’t be the guillotine for me. And the prospect of my wallowing in the filth of some asylum is beneath consideration. Imagine the quality of the conversation—to say nothing of the food!” She chuckled again. “No, no, it won’t do at all.” She mounted the two steps to the summerhouse, took up the pistol from the wicker chair, then sat in Paul’s sprawling, careless way. “Fortunately, gentlemen of my class have prescribed responses to awkward situations of this kind. Katya was right about the advantages of being a man in this society. Now I really think you should be on your way, Doctor. You’re looking a little pallid. Loss of blood will do that, you know, even to the notoriously full-blooded Basques.”
I knew that she—he was right. There was no other way. Katya living on as a spectacle in some asylum? Like Mlle M.? No. Oh, no. And the fact was, Katya was already dead, lying on her bed up in the house.
Drained, adrift in a vertigo of hopelessness, I turned to leave.
But I was arrested by Paul’s lazy drawl. “Oh, by the way, here’s a little something Katya wanted me to give you.” He tugged a small silk drawstring bag from his coat pocket. “They’re yours, I believe.”
“No, not mine. They were gifts to Katya.”
“Oh, really?” He examined one of the pebbles with mild disrelish. “Well, no one could ever accuse you of being a mad spendthrift when it comes to gift-giving.”
“No, I suppose not. Paul? Would you do me a favor?”
“So long as it’s something slight, old fellow.”
“Would you keep those pebbles for me? Just hold them in your hand . . . for remembrance?”
His metallic eyes softened for just a second; then he grinned. “If that would amuse you . . . why not?”
“Thank you.” I turned and walked up the overgrown path.
THE sun was setting in a russet flush along the horizon as I drove the trap down past the ruined garden wall. The poplars lining the lane were suffused with an amber afterglow that seemed to rise from the earth. The mare’s ears flickered at the sound of the shot.
ENVOI
I remember once describing the Basques to Katya as men who never forgive. Never.
During the course of my medical practice, fate delivered a slightly wounded rapist into my hands.
He did not survive treatment.
Salies-les-Bains
August 1938
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1This tale is complete without footnotes, but there are also social, historical, political and personal observations available to you. You can download these cybernotes from www.trevanian.com or have a friend download them for you. Cybernote 1 will deal with “bog Irish.”
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BOOKS BY TREVANIAN
The Crazyladies of Pearl Street
Shibumi
The Eiger Sanction
The Loo Sanction
The Summer of Katya
The Main
Incident at Twenty Mile
Hot Night in the City
Death Dance (edited by Trevanian)
The Green Cake
MY SISTER, my mother and I sat in a row on the front stoop of 238 North Pearl Street, feeling overwhelmed and diminished by the unfamiliar bustle of the big city. Beside the stoop was a stack of twine-bound cardboard boxes bulging with bedding, clothing and kitchen things. Around them were clustered our few scraps of furniture looking scuffed and shabby in the unforgiving glare of daylight. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and the mid-March sun felt good, but chill winter air still lurked in the shadows. The year was 1936; I was six years old, my sister was three, my mother was twenty-seven, and we were beginning a new life.
We had been sitting on that stoop long enough for the gritty brownstone to mottle the backs of my legs between my short pants and my knee-high stockings. My sister wore a starched, frilly dress that Mother had bought out of money meant to tide us over until we got on our feet because she wanted Anne-Marie to look pretty the first time her father saw her, but the dress had got crushed during the long drive with the three of us crammed into half of the front seat of my uncle’s rattletrap of a truck. And now we sat hip to hip on that step, Mother in the middle, my sister and I drawing comfort from contact with her, while she drew maternal strength and determination from contact with us. Anne-Marie was hungry and sleepy and close to tears. Taking her onto her lap, Mother looked anxiously up and down the street for my father whom she hadn’t seen for four years, not since the morning he went out to look for work and didn’t come back, leaving her with a toddler, a baby and two dollars and some change in her purse.
She didn’t hear from him again until a letter arrived just three days earlier saying how sorry he was for running away from the family he loved, the family he had worried about every single minute since he left. There was no excuse for behaving like that, he admitted, but he just couldn’t stand being made to feel he wasn’t man enough to support his own wife and children. He had been sure that her family would give us a hand once he was out of the picture. He knew that Mother’s father considered him to be little better than a flashy hustler and a con man—exactly what he was, in fact. The letter said that he had found a job and an apartment in Albany. Not much of a job and not much of an apartment, but it would be a start, and he had something big in the works. T
hat letter had come in the nick of time, because the owner of Lake George Village’s only all-year restaurant had just told my mother that he wouldn’t be needing her as a waitress when the tourist season began. Her frequent absences during that winter when she was sick with lung trouble had shown him that she was unreliable, and he had decided to replace her.
During the whole trip down to Albany, my uncle had grumbled about the time and money this was costing him, and when we didn’t find my father waiting at the address he had given us, my uncle just unloaded our stuff in grumpy haste and left us there, saying that he had to make it back before nightfall because he didn’t trust the headlights of his old truck. He was in such a hurry to get away that he drove off without shutting the passenger-side door, which flopped open. As he reached over to shut it he stepped on his brakes, causing the door to pinch his hand. He roared a curse as he furiously stomped on the gas to get the hell away from that goddamn hole of a goddamn slum, but the truck stalled and a car behind him sounded its irritated horn, so he shouted at the driver to go to hell and started up again, and he drove off pounding his good fist on the steering wheel, glad to see the end of his wife’s goddamned freeloading cousin and her goddamned brats!
Mother and I exchanged glances and couldn’t help smiling.
My father’s letter had said that we should wait for him on the steps of the building because he was planning a big surprise for us, but now Mother was tired of sitting there with people peering at us from windows and stoops all around. She rose to go inside and look for him, but I grabbed her wrist. Like most kids, I loved surprises, and I didn’t want her to ruin this one. Let’s wait just a little while longer.
A couple of boys detached themselves from a knot of kids and sauntered past our stoop, disdainfully eyeing our cardboard boxes and our shoddy furniture, then letting their sassy eyes slide over me. I knew that my short pants and knee socks made me an object of scorn to these two boys dressed in knickers. From school I was familiar with those universal rituals among boys when they puppy-sniff one another for the first time, measuring and hefting for rank and dominance. I could tell that the smaller of the two boys, a big-eared kid about a year older than I, was wondering if this skinny new kid would turn out to be a regular guy or a sissy, if I would fight my way out of school-yard challenges or run to the teachers. I kept my eyes on him as he strolled by, but I held him in a soft, tired look. To look hard-eyed would be to send a challenge; to avoid his eyes would be to submit. Boys are born with this canine pack-hunter’s instinct for caste and nipping order. After the kids had passed, one of them crossed the street and spoke to a flat-faced, boneless woman sitting on her stoop, obviously his mother, and I could see she was asking him about us, especially about my mother, who wasn’t anything like the faded, marshmallow mothers of other kids. My mother was young and slim and had short bobbed hair; she could dance and run and play games, and she wore slacks in an era when few women did. I don’t know what the kid said, but his mother sniffed in a way that was both competitive and dismissive. I was used to that sort of reaction to my mother, but still sensitive about it. It wasn’t that I wanted her to be the same as other mothers. I was proud of her youthful good looks and her feisty independence, but I sometimes wished she could be different in a less obvious way because it’s hard having a mother who’s different.