we take it on the terrace?”
Still stung by her brother’s attitude, I considered saying that I had too busy a schedule to dawdle over tea, but two things prevented me. The first was the thought that my languid condition when Katya first found me in the park might make this sound ridiculous. The second was the fact that I was in love with Katya.
I did not realize this at the time, of course, but hindsight clarifies events by diminishing blurring details, and it is obvious to me now that I was already in the first stages of interest, affection, and excitement that would soon blossom into love. Nothing significant had yet passed between us—the look of her suntanned profile as I walked beside her in the park, the wisps of hair at her temples, the way her eyes had searched mine with a mixture of sincerity and amusement, the accidental touch of her hand and the feel of her waist when I had awkwardly attempted to help her down from the sulky—nothing of substance. But the particles from which love is built up are too fine to be subdivided and analyzed, just as the total of a love is too extensive to be perceived at one time and from one emotional coign of vantage. Beyond reason, beyond logic, and without knowing it, I was in love with her.
I expressed my love with admirable restraint: I told her I would be delighted to take tea on the terrace.
The brother rose and said that he would have to deny himself the pleasure and enlightenment of my company, as he really should go to his room and rest in hopes of inspiring Time to intercede on his behalf and cure him. He bowed to me with a slightly taunting deference as he said, “Above all, Doctor, avoid challenging my sister on any subject. If she fears she might lose a contest, she’s not above bashing you with the teapot. As for you, Katya, let me warn you that the good doctor seems to be in a rather contentious mood this afternoon. No doubt a little sensitive about his limitations as a healer of broken bodies. Well, I’m off. Do have a pleasant chat.”
The terrace on which we sat, overlooking the dank, neglected garden, was dappled with sunlight through branches of the trees. And when the slight breezes sketched patterns of shadow over Katya’s high-necked dress of white lawn trimmed with lace at the cuffs and throat, the light striking her bodice reflected up under her firm round chin and seemed to set her face aglow. I watched, absorbed, as she served the pale tisane with gestures as graceful as they were sure and nonchalant. That ease of habit, I assumed, was a matter of breeding, just as was her brother’s indolent superiority. I was again struck by the similarities, and blessed differences, between them.
“You live here alone… you and your brother?” I asked.
“There is a village woman who comes.”
“But not, presumably, a gardener.” I gestured towards the congested overgrowth before us.
She laughed. “That’s not fair. I have toiled long hours in an effort to create an artless, even wild effect. And you don’t seem to be impressed by it.”
“Oh, but I am impressed. You have achieved an effect that I might term… uniquely unstudied.”
“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head in modest acceptance of the praise.
“And your parents?” I asked. “Where are they?”
“My mother died in childbirth… our birth.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not really, of course. How could you be? But I appreciate your conventional expression of sympathy.”
“And your father?”
She looked out over the garden and sipped her tisane. Then she replaced the cup in its saucer and said airily, “Oh, Father’s hale enough.”
“He lives here with you?”
“We live with him, actually.”
I was somewhat surprised. If there was a father living here, how did it come to pass that Katya was dispatched on a bicycle to fetch a doctor, all the way to Salies?
She smiled. “Well, to tell the truth, Father does not know about Paul’s little accident yet. The quotidian problems of life are quite beyond Father’s capacity to cope. No, let me say that more correctly. It’s not his capacity to cope that is in question, it’s his interest in coping. He devotes most of each day to his ‘studies.’ “ She accented the word comically in what I took to be an imitation of her father’s voice.
“Studies of what kind?”
“Goodness only knows. He pores over thick tomes and works at reducing them to scratchings in thin little notebooks, and every now and then he says ‘Hm-m-m’ or ‘Ah!’ or ‘I wonder?’ “ She laughed lightly. “I’m really not doing him justice. He’s a dear old thing with a passion for medieval village life and customs that absorbs his time and mind, leaving him with only the most vague interest in the here and now. I sometimes think Father believes us to be living in an era that is posthistoric and rather insignificant.”
“Is that where it comes from? Your interest in books and learning? Not many women concern themselves with such things as anatomy and Dr. Freud.”
“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
“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
