Rodney Whitaker - The Summer of Katya

“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 were 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 stiffened… there was foam on her lips! And she…” Katya’s eyes searched mine, desperately seeking understanding. “Poor Hortense was finally dead, Montjean. 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!”