“What? Ah! So we have. Pretending to forget my destination is a little ruse I use to test whether my companion is paying attention.”
“Very clever.”
“Thank you. Would you care to step in while I gather my things?”
“Thank you, no. I’ll wait for you here.”
I borrowed Doctor Gros’s sulky and we rode south out of town into the countryside where apple trees bordering the dirt road scented the noonday air with their ripening fruit. Despite my practice of rehearsing ideal conversations to myself and loading my statements until they dripped with wit and insight, I could think of nothing amusing to say. She, for her part, seemed uninterested in social chatter as she sat with her face lifted to the sun in evident pleasure. Twice she turned to me and smiled in a generous, impersonal way. She delighted in the warmth of the sun and the touch of the breeze created by the motion of the trap, and she smiled back at the moment that was giving her pleasure. I was included in that smile as though I were a likable, anonymous thing.
Failing to think of anything interesting or witty to say, I fell back upon the banal. “I take it you are not of the
“No.” She was silent for a moment, then she seemed to realize that a one-syllable answer was a bit brusque. “No, we came for the waters.”
“It must be inconvenient.”
She had already returned to her pleasurable reverie, so it was several moments before she said, “I’m sorry. You were saying?…”
“Nothing important.”
“Oh? I see.”
Half a minute passed in silence. “I simply suggested that it must be inconvenient.”
“What must be?”
I sighed. “Living so far from the village… being here for the waters and living so far from the village.” I sincerely wished I had not entered on this topic of conversation that neither interested her nor showed me to advantage.
“We prefer it, really.”
“I suppose you don’t have to come into town every day for your regimen of the waters, then.” I said this knowing perfectly well that she did not come in every day. Salies is a very small place, and I was a romantic young man with much leisure. If she came often to Salies, I would have seen her; and if I had seen her, I would certainly have remembered her.
“No, not every day. In fact…” She smiled a greeting to an old peasant we were passing on the road, and he lifted his chin in the crisp Basque salute that is as much dismissal as it is greeting. Then she turned again to me. “In fact, we don’t come in at all.”
“But…”
“When I told you we were here to take the waters, I was lying.”
“Lying?” I smiled. “Do you make a practice of lying?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “It’s often the easiest thing to do, and sometimes the kindest. It is true that we are here for reasons of health, and to avoid unnecessary questions I say we are taking the waters.”
“I see. But what—” I stopped short and laughed. “I was going to indulge in one of those unnecessary questions.”
She laughed with me. “I’m sure you were. Ah! We have arrived. That lane to the right.”
The grassy, rutted condition of the tree-lined lane attested to its long period of disuse before the Trevilles occupied the house. As we approached the ancient stone heap called Etcheverria we passed along the crumbling wall of a derelict garden grown rank with weeds among which a few volunteer flowers struggled in stunted bloom, reminders of the passing hand of man. Twice the horse jerked aside nervously.
“It’s haunted, you know,” she said with a smile.
“And you don’t mind living in a haunted house?”
“No, not the house. The garden. Local tradition says the garden is haunted.” She cocked her head thoughtfully and added, “Well, perhaps the house is haunted as well. Most houses are… in one way or another.”
“That’s an interesting observation. But Dr. Freud would contend that it is most people, not most houses, that are haunted… in one way or another.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know.”
I was genuinely surprised. And fascinated. “You have read Dr. Freud?”
“Yes. After I had learned what I wanted to know about anatomy.” She laughed. “One leads to the other, I suppose. First you learn how the various bits function, then you wonder why they bother to.”
We turned in at the sagging gate. It was not necessary to tie up the horse, as she was an experienced doctor’s mare used to standing calmly in the traces. By the time I walked around to offer her a hand down, Katya had already begun to descend on her own. My clumsy attempt to give un-needed assistance and her last-minute effort to accept the titular support of my guiding hand created a moment of awkward grappling that made us both laugh.
“This is the stuff of low comedy,” she said.
“Or of high romance,” I added.
She smiled up at me. “No. Only low comedy, I think.”
“Well, perhaps you’re right. That’s the first time I ever danced with a woman who wasn’t—” I am sure I must have blushed to my ears as I realized that my hand still rested on her waist. I pulled it back quickly.
She lead the way towards the house. “A woman who wasn’t… what?” she asked over her shoulder.
How could I say: who wasn’t wearing stays? My palm still felt the indescribably exciting texture of soft flesh under firm fabric. “Who wasn’t…” I cleared my throat. “…a member of my family.”
She glanced at me sideways. “I don’t believe that.”
“Good. I often lie, you see. It’s the easiest thing to do, and sometimes the kindest.”
She chuckled. “All right.”
The faзade of the house was in poor repair; rising damp had rotted the plaster in places, revealing rough- cut stone beneath. As we stepped into the central hall I was aware of a dank chill that must have made the place most uncomfortable in winter.
“Katya?” a man’s voice called from a room off the principal hall.
“Yes, Paul,” she answered. “I have the doctor with me. Help is on its way, if you can manage to cling to life for a moment longer.”
The man laughed in full voice as she motioned me to follow her into the salon.
“Paul, this is Dr. Montjean. Dr. Montjean, my poor battered brother.”
As he rose from a chaise, his right arm bound against his chest by strips of linen, my astonishment was undisguised.
They were twins. Identical in every feature: the full mouths, the high foreheads, the prominent cheekbones, the firm chins, the thick chestnut hair. The features were identical, but the effect was startlingly different, as the same elements were interpreted in the context of their sexes. What in her was a handsome beauty appeared frail and almost effeminate in him. What in her movements was grace, in his seemed affectation. An unkind critic might have described her as having, in a way of speaking, a bit too much face; while he had too little. This difference- within-similarity was nowhere more evident than in their eyes. The same almond shape and slightly crooked set, the same clear pale grey made startling by dark lush lashes, but they created totally opposite impressions. She had a gentleness of glance that seemed to invite one to look into the springs of her being. His glance was metallic and impenetrable. Light glinted on the surface of his eyes, while it glowed from deep within hers. Her eyes were bridges; his barriers.
They laughed together at my frank surprise. “It’s a tired old prank, Doctor, not warning people in advance that we are twins,” the brother said as he pressed my hand in that awkward upside-down way of the left-handed handshake. “But we never weary of the effect it has on people the first time they see us together. Forgive us for amusing ourselves at your expense, but there is so little to divert one in this out-of-the-way
