love as something one person felt for another. I had always conceived of love as a state, a condition outside the two persons, a kind of shared shelter within which both could find comfort and confidence. So how could it be that I felt so total and intense a love, while she…?
Nor could I console myself with the possibility that she might one day come to love me. Young and romantic as I was, I could not view love as something one could grow into, a contract the items of which one could negotiate one by one. Either love was whole and absorbed you totally, or it was not love. It was something else. Something more reasonable and calm, perhaps; something quite nice in its own way… but something I did not want.
After a time, I drew a long breath and spoke to her, my voice calm, but thin and toneless. “All right. I accept that you don’t love me, Katya. But I love you. I don’t intend to burden you with my love, but I can’t deny it either. It exists. And because I love you, I cannot allow you to waste your life, running forever from fears and shadows.”
“There’s no point in trying to persuade me. I love my father… even as you say you love me.”
“Love him? Well, perhaps. But you don’t respect him.”
“That’s not true! How can you say that?”
“Do you really believe that if your father knew you were sacrificing your youth and future to protect him, he would allow it? You and Paul are making decisions on his behalf that he would never make himself. You’re treating him as though he were a mindless infant.”
“Jean-Marc, my father is…”—she had to press the word out—”…insane.”
“Yes, insane. But not irrational. He’s capable of love, of feeling, of making decisions for himself.”
Her voice hardened. “You’re not thinking of telling him the truth, are you?”
“I have considered it, yes. I’ve considered every means of saving you. But no, I don’t intend to tell him. It’s not my place to do that. It’s your place, Katya. Or Paul’s.”
“I never could. And if you did, I would hate you forever.”
I smiled bitterly. “I had hoped to hear you confess your love for me tonight. But instead, I’ve only discovered conditions under which you would hate me forever. I’m not doing very well, am I?”
She came down the steps and sat beside me, slipping her hand under my arm and laying her head against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Jean-Marc.”
I nodded and pressed her hand between my arm and side. Though the touch and warmth of her pleased me, it eroded my all-too-frangible barriers against the tears that began to sting and prick against the backs of my eyes. I compressed my lips and rose, stepping away to prevent her from seeing me cry.
But she came to me, taking me in her arms, pressing against me and rocking me gently, as though I were an injured child. I clung to her desperately, my cheeks against the side of her head so she could not look into my face. Her hair was soft and warm, and soon it was damp with my tears. I brushed her hair with my lips, then her ear, her neck, her throat… and my mouth found hers. I felt her body soften and blend into mine. Her pelvis pressed against me so hard I could feel the bones, and I pressed back, as though wanting to break the two layers of skin that separated our flesh. She squirmed against me; a little gasp and whimper caught in her throat as her fingers clutched at my back; she stiffened and held me with such force that her muscles trembled….
….Her body went slack in my arms; our kiss softened to a light touch of lips; then our mouths separated and I could see her eyes, moist and infinitely soft. Then confusion and fright grew in her eyes, and she pressed her hands against my chest and drew away, and all the warm places where we had touched together seemed cold. With nervous fingertips she brushed wisps of hair from her forehead, her glance anxious and averted.
“Oh, Jean-Marc,” she said breathlessly. “I’m sorry. That was terrible of me. It’s never happened to me before—that… feeling. I didn’t know! But… nothing has changed. This does not mean that I love you. And that’s why it was terrible of me to do this… to feel this. Please forgive me.”
“Katya…” I reached for her.
“No!” She stepped back, her eyes large with fright. Then she repeated more calmly. “No, Jean-Marc. No. Now I… I must go back to the house.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I must!”
“Katya, do you know that I promised Paul that I would never again try to see you after tonight?”
She lowered her eyes and nodded. “Yes. And I’m sure it’s best.” Her breathing was still shallow. “Yes, that is best. Now I must go.”
I yearned to say something that would make her stay. I wanted to take her into my arms and comfort again the cold places. But what was the use? What was the use?
I drew a long breath. “Well… good-bye, then, Katya.”
She didn’t look up at me. “Good-bye, Jean-Marc,” she said softly. And she turned and went up the path to Etcheverria.
I watched her go, dapples of pallid moonlight rippling over her white dress until she had disappeared among the ragged overgrowth.
I can’t say how long I sat in her wicker chair. Ten minutes? An hour? Impossible to know. My knees tight together, my eyes focused unseeing on the floor of the summerhouse, I felt infinitely alone, and I had a premonition that I would be alone forever. There was no bitterness in this realization, only a kind of calm hopelessness.
And even now, as I pen this description years later, my heart goes out to the lost and empty young man I picture sitting there. I no longer feel the pain. But I remember his… vividly.
Logic tells me that what I shall now relate could not have happened as I remember it. I cannot re-create the events and sensations objectively. All I can do is to describe what I recall to the limits of my skill, accepting that the memory retains only a distorted record of traumatic experiences.
I was sitting there—how long does not matter, for my distress was beyond time—until at last the floor of the summerhouse came back into focus and I found myself shivering with the late-night damp. I drew a long, shuddering sigh that stung my lungs. I had better return to Salies. Why not? What was to be gained by sitting there? I pushed myself out of the wicker chair numbly and started down the steps. I felt a shock, as though I had walked into a solid wall, and there was a blaze of pain in my right side. I think I remember a flash of red light, but I believe it was behind, not in front of, my eyes. I recall no sound, no explosion, but I knew—as one knows things in a nightmare—that I had been shot. The garden lurched to one side, and I was clutching at the doorframe of the summerhouse. My lips must have been pressed against the frame, because I remember the grit of flakes of paint in my mouth. Ice spread through my stomach. Ice in my legs. A tingling weakness down my spine. And the ground rushed up at me as I fell, not
But no! The animal in me cried out. Live! Live!
I rushed towards another blotch of dim light, and I knew with a sureness beyond reason that this would be the last of the light and everything beneath would be blackness. The glow swelled as I yearned myself towards it. It smeared and swam, then came into focus. Moonlight. A tree of grass close before my eyes. A boot. The toe of a man’s boot. I reached out and grasped the boot to arrest my endless fall. But the boot was tugged from my hold. With all my strength, I looked up, and there, far above me, bulging and rippling like a reflection in water, was Monsieur Treville’s face.
“Please… please…” I muttered through a thick tongue.
His face registered horror, and he recoiled from me.
I heard his voice, hollow and distant. “Oh, my God! My God!”
The blackness was rising inside me again. I could feel its chill shadow swell from within. “Please?…”
And I fell back into the void. An endless blackness… no sound… no light… tumbling… floating…
… floating… towards something white… with lines in it… bars… squares… a window. A window that
