Rodney Whitaker - The Summer of Katya

I was sure my lungs would burst and my legs crumple beneath me by the time we came to the last frantic leaps of the Kax Karot and we were all laughing and clapping one another on the back. Katya had reacted to the stunning effect of the ritual of the Drowned Virgin with a vivacity more vibrant and life-embracing than before. There was, in fact, a kind of desperate energy in her dancing and laughter that made me a bit uneasy.

Once again we took refuge in our little niche by the buildings, as I tried to regain my breath. “Too many years… of study in the big city…” I panted. “I’m not up to this. I must get something… to drink… or I shall die right here… unnoticed and unmourned.”

She laughed. “Poor sickly thing. Oh, very well.”

It was not customary for women to enter the bars, so I offered to leave her with her father or brother while I fought my way through the crowd to get something for us to drink.

“Do you know where they are?”

“No, but we’ll find them.” I began to search the throng over the heads of the people near us.

“No, I’ll be perfectly fine right here.”

“Alone?”

“What harm could come to me? And if you’re concerned about my reputation, I have a feeling that a woman who is not Basque doesn’t have a reputation worth saving anyway.”

I laughed and confessed that she was perceptive in her estimate of Basque views of outlanders, those poor creatures who lacked the touch of God. After only a moment of hesitation, I gave her hand a farewell squeeze and shouldered my way through the milling throng until I had gained the door of one of the cafйs in which all the tables were crowded with old men sitting before their glasses, their veined faces alight with drink and merriment. As I pressed towards the zinc bar I caught a glimpse of Monsieur Treville at a table, surrounded by aged Basque peasants. On the table was a nearly empty bottle of Izarra, that delicious, expensive, and very strong Basque liqueur that tastes of mountain flowers. It was evident that Monsieur Treville was buying the drinks and that the old Basque men were paying for his hospitality by responding to his questions about customs and traditions, each holding forth in his broken French until he was interrupted by contradictions and clarifications (both lengthy and irrelevant) by another of the men, for one of the devices in the devious Basque temperament is flooding the other fellow’s mind with scrupulously precise detail—concealing the true behind the factual. I thought to warn Monsieur Treville of the deceptive potency of Izarra, but he did not see me in the dense crowd, nor was their any point in calling out to him, as my voice would have been lost in the din and babble. Just as his table was blocked from my sight, I saw him catch the eye of the harassed waiter to order another bottle of Izarra, which gesture the old men greeted with sober nods. It was clearly the right and proper thing for an outlander to do. I knew that the old men would soon reach the point in their drinking at which it became obligatory to sing in their high, strained voices with their peculiar harmonies. I wondered with a smile if Monsieur Treville would join in.

I was able to capture a glass of red for myself and a corked bottle of citronade for Katya, but I was pressed away from the bar before I could collect my change, and I had to make space for myself with an extended arm to be able to drink off my wine before the glass was jostled empty. It was the good, acrid, harsh wine I remembered, and it scratched away some of the dryness in my throat. Soon, by the natural and irresistible eddy of the throng, I found myself back outside the bar, without my change, but in possession of their glass—a fair enough exchange, as I doubted that Katya would prefer to drink her citronade from the bottle.

The dancing was in full swing under the colored paper lanterns, and crocodiles of mischievous children linked hands and snaked in and out of the crowd, into the paths of dancers to pester and annoy their elders, who responded with laughs and half-hearted slaps at the backs of dodging heads. To avoid the heaviest tides of the throng I eased my way around the rim of the square close to the buildings, where the occasional drunk sought to relieve himself in a passageway, and pairs of young lovers found the haven of dark doorways. I was blocked for a time at one of the temporary buvettes set up before a shop, a simple pair of planks laid across two barrels where a man sloshed wine from a big bottle back and forth over rows of stout glasses until they were more or less full on the puddled planks. The man deftly caught the coin I tossed over the head of the person in front of me, and I reached around and snatched up a glass and emptied it in two swallows before replacing it on the planks to be refilled without the indignity of being washed in public.

“…Katya?” I heard the name through the medley of babble and music, and I looked around to discover Paul standing not far away in one of the doorways. “Where is Katya?” he shouted again, enunciating carefully over the din.

I pointed in the direction I had left her; then I raised up the bottle of citronade to indicate why I had left her alone.

He gestured for me to join him, and I pressed through the mass of people until I was beside him in the doorway. It was only then I realized he was standing with a young lady dressed in high fashion, quite out of keeping with the colorful handmade dresses of the Basque women. I recognized her as one of the girls who had been in the motorcar that had nearly overturned us back on the road. Paul put his good arm about her and hugged her to him a bit roughly as he made introductions. “Dr. Montjean, I would like you to meet Mlle… I assume you have a name, my dear?”

“Of course I have a name,” she giggled.

“Don’t tell it to me. Preserve the attractive mystery. Doctor, I would like to introduce Mlle Somebodyoranother, a ravishing bit of fluff without an idea in her little head.”

The young woman tsked and coyly pushed at his chest with her gloved hand, the gesture affirming his evaluation of her intellectual capacities while it revealed that she was a bit tipsy. She had one of those pretty, vacant faces that conceal nothing, as there is nothing to be concealed. Small round eyes, up-tipped nose, pert mouth, full rosy cheeks—one of the decorative types that does not wear well, but which is happily never required to. It was evident that she was smitten by Paul’s undeniable good looks and his smooth patter of rakish nonsense.

“Delighted,” I said uncertainly.

“Enchanted,” she said in a thin breathy voice with the accent of the north.

“Mlle Nobody is visiting us from the great world of Paris,” Paul explained. “She and a company of friends have borrowed the handsome motorcar of one of their rich fathers to make this trek into the hinterlands from the relatively civilized outpost of Biarritz. Their trip here was dusty and uneventful, save for a little fun they had hectoring local rustics along the way by frightening their horses… isn’t that right, Mlle Whocares?”

She giggled, obviously not recognizing Paul and me.

“And that fellow over there,” Paul made a vague gesture towards an athletic-looking young man glaring at us from the shelter of the next doorway, “he was the driver of the vehicle in question. We may also assume he had anticipated being Mlle Nothing’s escort—if not more—and at this moment he is smoldering with jealousy in a most gratifying way. Isn’t that so, you insipid little charmer?” He hugged her to his side, and she rolled her eyes at me as though asking if ever in my born days I had met the likes of this outrageous rogue.

I kept my face set in a smile as I asked, “Will there be trouble?”