The Summer of Katya

“But, Papa, aren’t you going to tell us what happened to the poor woman?” Katya asked, interrupting her father at a bridge between digressions.

“What poor woman?” Monsieur Treville wondered.

“The one who was bound hand and foot and thrown into the river!”

“Oh, her. Well… she floated!”

“Good for her,” Paul said. “Smart thinking. But then, I suppose it was the only sensible thing to do under the circumstances.”

“Yes, yes, she floated. And when she was pulled out of the river, she was returned to all her former riches and power.”

“And her brother?” I asked. “What happened to him for sacrificing his sister to his own views of right and wrong?”

Paul turned and settled his calm metallic eyes on me.

“History records that he continued his long and uneventful reign,” Monsieur Treville informed us. “And to this day the event is celebrated in the fкte d’Alos—Good Lord! What is that!” He turned and looked back at the source of the braying klaxon behind us. A motorcar with ornate brass headlamps had overtaken us and was signaling for us to pull off the road and let it pass. The occupants, two young men and three young women decked out in the fashionable sartorial impedimenta of motoring, were shouting and laughing and waving their arms as they neared, the front of their vehicle nearly touching our rear wheel, and they convulsed with delight when our horse shied and panicked at the noise and unaccustomed appearance of the machine. Paul had all he could do to hold the horse in check as we lurched off the shoulder of the road and into the shallow drainage ditch, nearly overturning our trap. The klaxon sounded a long, taunting blare as they passed, and the young athletic-looking man steering the motorcar shouted out something about “…the Twentieth Century!” as they bounced away in a swirl of dust and acrid petrol fumes, shrieking with laughter at the fun of it all.

White-knuckled with fury, Paul held the horse in, as the rest of us descended carefully from the high side of the trap to avoid turning it over. Katya’s first concern was for the horse, which was staring back in its panic, revealing white all around its eyes. With no fear of its rearing or nipping, she stroked its nose and cooed to it until the shuddering of its neck muscles calmed and it was gentled enough to be led up onto the roadway.

While common enough in the cities by the summer of 1914, motorcars were still a rarity in the countryside, and I had never before seen one on the narrow dirt roads of the Basque provinces. The sassy young driver had called out in what I recognized to be a Parisian accent (which the others could not distinguish, as they were from Paris themselves and assumed the clipped, half-swallowed northern sound to be correct and accent-free). The borish young people were doubtless out on a motoring adventure into the unpenetrated hinterlands and having a bit of sport with the local rustics.

As we continued our trip, I reflected on the characteristic ways in which each of us had reacted to the event. I had been frankly frightened; Monsieur Treville was inspired to ruminate on the inevitable erosion of ancient village traditions that would follow motor transportation; Katya was solicitous of the horse; and Paul had stared after the motorcar, his expression morbidly calm, his eyes cold and flat.

* * *

When we approached Alos over a narrow bridge, it was late afternoon and the sun was already beginning to slide towards the mountains that held the village as though in a lap. The thin cry of the txitsu flute and the rattle of the stick drum from the village square told me the pastoral of Robert le Diable was in progress. My recollection of the dance was that it was an interminable and dreary thing, so I was less anxious to view it than were Katya and Monsieur Treville. Paul suggested that they walk on ahead while he and I attended to the horse. We would find them later. They joined the stream of families and couples flowing towards the square, while Paul and I recrossed the stone bridge to the outlying field that had been converted into a temporary yard for rigs and horses, which were tethered and given fodder for a small fee. The man in charge recognized me from years before, and it was inevitable that he thump me on the back and ask after many people of whom I had only the vaguest memory. As the conversation was in Basque, Paul was excluded, and he drifted away as I sought to disengage myself without appearing unfriendly. The price of freedom was an appointment to do a txikiteo, a tour of the bars and buvettes, with the hostler later that night, an appointment I hoped he would forget.

I found Paul at the edge of a group of farmers and shepherds, looking off and smiling to himself. I followed his gaze and saw the motorcar that had almost overturned us. It was stationed beneath a tree at the edge of the meadow, its brass headlamps glinting back the low angle of the setting sun.

“They have been delivered into my hands,” Paul said quietly. “It’s enough to reawaken one’s belief in divine justice.”

“Oh come, Paul. For Katya’s sake, let’s just enjoy ourselves. Forget it.”

He smiled at me. “My dear fellow, I haven’t the slightest intention of forgetting it. Well, Doctor? Shall we locate the others? I am looking forward to this evening. I confess I had feared it would be infinitely dull, but things are beginning to look up.”

“Remember your shoulder. It wouldn’t do to hurt it again.”

“You’re such a good-hearted and solicitous fellow. Perhaps you should consider taking up medicine as a career? Come now, let’s set ourselves to the arduous business of having fun.”

We discovered Katya and Monsieur Treville among the throng collected in the village square, his urbane clothes and her white dress and shoes setting them apart. They were standing in the front of a ring of onlookers around the performers of the pastoral of Robert le Diable, Katya smiling on with affectionate interest, as though the performers were friends of hers, and her father watching intensely, occasionally scribbling notes with a pencil stub on a pad of paper. The Devil and the Horse engaged in off-color buffoonery while the Hero performed the Dance of the Glass, leaping with flashing entrechats and landing, balanced on his soft dancing shoes, on the rim of a thick glass that had been filled with wine and set on the stones before him. Twice the glass spilled and once it shattered, but each time it was replaced with shouts of encouragement until the dancer had effected three sauts in a row without spilling the wine, which accomplishment was rewarded with roars of applause and loud whinnies of the famous cri basque from exuberant onlookers, many of whom had already managed to get their noses bent with wine, to use the local phrase.

“The wine represents blood, I assume,” Monsieur Treville muttered to me. “Perhaps sacramental blood. And I suppose the Devil is one of the ancient, pre-Christian earth deities. Can you provide any insight into the symbolism of the Horse, Doctor?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. And I doubt that anyone here could. It is one of those Basque rituals that is performed simply because it has always been performed, and no one has ever questioned its meaning.”

“Perhaps the Horse represents fertility,” Monsieur Treville suggested. “You see how its chases after the Maiden, who slaps at it and tries to hide herself behind the Devil?”

I nodded absently, more interested in watching the delight and fascination play across Katya’s features than in constructing a symbolic substructure for a ritual I had seen performed so often.

“What are they saying?” Monsieur Treville asked me.

“Who, sir?”

“The Horse and the Devil, with all their shouting and bantering.”

I shrugged, and perhaps my cheeks reddened a little. It had never occurred to me to take any note of it as a boy, but the Basque badinage between the two performers was boldly bawdy, having to do with sexual competence and the size of members. I glanced uneasily towards Katya and cleared my throat. “Ah… perhaps you are right, sir. Perhaps the Horse does represent fertility.”

“Hm-m. And what is that large object with the knob on the end that the Maiden keeps trying to take from the Hero?”

I looked for help from Paul, but he smiled blandly back and said, “Yes, Jean-Marc, do tell us. What do you make the object out to be?”

Katya lowered her eyes and smiled the faintest conceivable smile.

“I… ah… to tell the truth, I never thought about it, sir. Say! What do you think the person who dances on the glass represents?”