Rodney Whitaker: The Summer of Katya

“I’ve never cared much what other women do. Another cup?”

“Please.”

As she leaned forward to pour, she said quietly, as though it had been on her mind all along, “You don’t like my brother, do you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, there was a certain tension in the air when I returned with tea.”

“Yes. I suppose there was.”

“And? What do you think of him?”

“Shall I be frank?”

“That means you intend to say something unpleasant, doesn’t it?”

“I could not be both pleasant and honest.”

“My word!” she said with mock astonishment. “Now, that is frank.”

“I don’t mean to be offensive—”

“But?”

“But… well, don’t you find him a little supercilious and arrogant?”

“He’s just playful.”

“Perhaps. May I ask you, is your name really Treville?”

She looked up in surprise. “What an odd question!”

I began to explain that it wasn’t odd at all, considering her brother’s reaction to being called Monsieur Treville, but she interrupted me with, “Oh, I see. He lead you to believe Treville wasn’t our name.”

“He did in fact.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Isn’t that just like him.”

“I don’t know. But I assume it is.”

“Just a bit of his playfulness. He enjoys having people on… keeping them off balance. You must forgive him.”

“Must I?”

“I was rather hoping you two might hit it off. He knows no one here.”

“I’m afraid the possibility of our hitting it off is rather distant.”

“Too bad. The poor fellow has a quick, intelligent mind and nothing to exercise it on in this forgotten corner of the world. He’s bored to distraction.”

“Why doesn’t he go elsewhere?”

“He is not free to.”

The tone in which she said this prohibited me from pursuing the reasons he was not free, so I asked instead, “Why doesn’t he occupy himself with reading and study, as you do?”

“Other people’s ideas bore him. Shall we walk in the garden?”

So blatant was this change of subject that I had to smile. “Won’t we need a native boy to cut a trail for us?”

She laughed as she walked ahead of me. “No, there’s a well-worn path through the jungle. I spend much of the day at the bottom of the garden. There’s a summerhouse—well, what’s left of a summerhouse—where I enjoy hiding away with a book. Now, it is true that if you stray off the path we may have to muster a search party to find you, but you’re safe enough if you stay close to me.”

“I can imagine nothing less safe than staying close to you, Mlle Treville, and nothing more desirable.”

She frowned. “That is unworthy of you, Dr. Montjean. Men don’t seem to realize that automatic, boyish gallantry can be a terrible bore. A woman must either pretend that she did not hear it, or she must respond to it. And often, she’d rather do neither.”

I felt my ears redden. “I am sorry. You are quite right, of course. May I make a confession to you?”

“I don’t know. Will the confession be a burden? Will I be obligated to keep your secrets? Or to pretend at compassion?”

“No, it’s an altogether trivial confession.”

“Oh, then by all means confess to me. I’m quite comfortable with the altogether trivial.”

“It’s actually more an explanation than a confession. That ‘automatic, boyish gallantry’ you quite rightly objected to is a result of a terrible habit I’ve fallen into. When I’m alone and daydreaming, I practice at confecting clever lines of dialogue. But when I inflict them on people in real life, somehow the cleverness dissolves in my mouth, and only a stilted artificiality is left. I didn’t mean to be forward. I confess, however, to being maladroit. Can you forgive me?”

She turned to me and searched my eyes with hers. “What is your given name, Dr. Montjean?”

“Jean-Marc.”

“Jean-Marc Montjean. Sounds like a character in a nineteenth-century novel. No wonder you’re stricken with romanticism.”

I shrugged. “Didn’t I hear your brother call you Katya?”

“Yes.”

“Katya? Russian diminutive for Catherine? But you’re not Russian, are you?”

“No. And my name isn’t Catherine. With brutal disregard for the delicate feelings of a young woman, and with no ear for poetry at all, my father baptized me Hortense. As soon as I realized that one could do such things, I changed my name to Katya.”

“Changed your name? By legal process?”

“No. By simple force of will. I merely refused to respond to the name Hortense, and I did nothing I was bade unless I was called Katya.”

“And you accuse me of being a romantic?”

“It wasn’t an accusation. It was simply a description.”

“What a strong-minded child you must have been to force everyone to call you by a new name.”

“ ‘Little brat’ might be closer to the mark.” She turned and continued down the narrow path.

As the overgrowth pressed in on us, the acrid smell of damp weeds rose from the cold earth and I felt a sudden ripple of chill over my skin. “Well, well. The ghost must be nearby,” I said, seeking to pass off my discomfort with a joke.

She stopped and turned to me, her expression quite serious. “Ghost? I’ve never thought of it as a ghost.”

“Well… what haunts this place then, if not a ghost?”

“A spirit. I’m sure she’d rather be called a spirit than a ghost.”

“It’s a woman then, the gho—spirit?”

“Yes. A girl, actually. Ghost indeed! What a grim idea!”

“Perhaps, but there’s something inevitably grim about ghosts. Being grim is their mйtier.”

“That may be true of ghosts, but it is not true of spirits, which are an altogether higher order of beings. And that’s all I want to hear about the matter. Well, we have arrived. What do you think of my private library?”

I surveyed the ruin of what had once been a charming little summerhouse. “Ah… Oh, it’s… magnificent. Magnificent! Perhaps a touch of paint would not be inappropriate. And I don’t think the replacement of some of the broken lattice slats would harm the effect overmuch. But I do like that quaint touch of rot around the foundation. And that nonchalant sag of the beams! It’s an architectural wonder, your library, standing as it does in defiance of the laws of gravity.”

“It’s a light-hearted little building, and therefore doesn’t have to obey the laws of gravity. Why do you pull such a face?”

“What a wretched pun!”

“You don’t care for puns?”

“Not overly, as I told you before.”

“You never told me you were a sworn enemy of the noble pun.”

“Yes I did—ah, no. It was your brother I told. Is this addiction to puns a family trait—a genetic flaw?”

“We are willing to allow words to function irreverently, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not what I meant, but it will do.” I looked about. “You can’t see the house from here.”

“What’s more to the point, you can’t be seen from the house,” she said, smiling at me.

After a second of wondering if I could interpret this as an invitation to some kind of intimacy, I took her hand and held it in both of mine. She did not resist, but her hand was limp and there was no return of my affectionate pressure. She simply searched my eyes with a little frown of—not annoyance, really—of doubtful inquiry.

“Mlle Treville…” I said, with nothing further to add.

“Yes?”

“You are… very beautiful.”

She laughed at me. “That’s not really true, you know. I believe I am a handsome woman. Healthy. Pleasant to look at. But I am not beautiful, and it’s foolish of you to say so.”