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“Everything.”
“Fine. I shall share with you the subtle mйlange of fact and fancy that passes for truth hereabouts. In imitation of Genesis, I shall begin ‘in the begi
“The mother is dead,” I said.
“A dwarf, Protestant, left-handed, and dead? My, my. There is food for gossip. She’s a handsome one, your young lady. I congratulate you. A bit healthy for my own taste. Men of our profession must always be alert to the possibility that healthy people are doing it on purpose to ruin us.”
“So there’s nothing really known about them at all.”
“Nothing at all, as I have just said at some length.” The cafй waiter having delivered yet another Berger, Gros measured into his glass just enough water to cloud the drink without weakening it, then he stared at me for a moment before asking, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well what? What the devil are we talking about? Have you and your young lady…?” He made a palm-up gesture cutting across his chest.
“I barely know her!”
“Shame on you! Engaging in such intimacies with a girl you barely know. There’s the youth of today for you! No sense of decorum. You do realize, I hope, that you’ve contracted the disease.”
“What disease?”
“Love, man! I spotted the symptoms as you crossed the square pushing that silly bicycle. The vague, purposeless smile, the eye gone dim with inward-directed vision, the—”
“Oh, really!”
“Smitten, by God! Ah well, it happens to the best of us. In proof of which, I confess that I was once infected by love in my youth. But alas,” he drew a fluttering sigh, “it developed that she was a shallow thing attracted only by my physical beauty and ignorant of the depths of sensitivity beneath.”
“I’d really rather not discuss—”
“You have been good enough to share with me your conviction that mine is a quackish branch of medicine. As I recall, you were appalled that the nation of Pasteur could also be the nation of medicinal spas and curative waters. Well, for my part, I am appalled that the culture capable of producing de Sade could also produce the billet-doux and the tender assignation. Love resides in the loin, my boy, not in the heart.”
“I should warn you that I take offense at this turn of talk.”
“Oh, my, my! Forgive me! Misericorde!”
“There is something further I would like to know.”
“Oh, really? I would have taken it from your attitude that you knew everything—everything worth knowing, that is.”
“Can you tell me anything about the house, Etcheverria?”
“Only that it’s a terribly damp old place that might have been designed by a member of our profession specializing in lung disorders.”
“You have never heard anything about its being haunted?”
“Haunted? No. But I would be delighted to add that bit of information to the mass of rumor surrounding the Trevilles, if you wish.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Ah! Here come the municipal thieves, eager for their nightly shearing.” Indeed, the lawyer, Maоtre La
“I’ll be going.”
“As you please. May I look forward to the pleasure of your company at the clinic tomorrow? Or have you decided to abandon medicine in favor of bicycle theft and girl molesting?”
“I’ll be there in the morning. But… I may want to take off a bit of time in the afternoon.”
“Ah-h-h, I see.” His voice was moist with conspiracy.
“Mlle Treville will be coming into town,” I explained needlessly.
“Ah-h-h, I see.”
“No, you don’t see!” I felt at one time both anger at his implication of wrongdoing and a childish sense of pleasure at being teased about her… as though she were mine to be teased about. “She has to fetch her bicycle,” I clarified.
“Ah-h-h, I see. Yes, of course. Her bicycle. To be sure.”
“I offered to bring it out to her, but she… I don’t know why I am bothering to explain all this to you.”
“Confession is good for the spirit, Montjean. It empties the soul, making space for more sin.”
I rose as the village worthies arrived and excused myself for having to run along without the privilege of their conversation.
After scribbling sketches and impressions in my journal and finding myself several times frozen in midsentence, staring through the page and smiling at nothing, I blew out my lamp and lay back against the bolster. The details of the room slowly emerged through the blackness as my eyes accustomed themselves to the moonglow that softly illuminated the curtain. All that night I drifted in and out of a sleep lightly brushed with images and imaginings that were not quite dreams.
Incredible though it later seemed, I woke the next morning without a trace of Katya in my mind, without the slightest sense of anticipation, beyond a general feeling of good will and buoyancy. It was not until I had made my toilet and was crossing the square to the cafй where I took morning brioches and coffee that the thought that she was coming into town for her bicycle slipped casually into my mind, then leapt, as it were, from thin script to bold italics in an instant, and a smile brightened my face. It did not occur to me to use the word love in assessing my feelings. Katya had, to be sure, been either in my thoughts or just beyond the rim of them since I left her the day before, and I could recall with tactile memory the brush of her soft warm lips on my cheek. But love? No, I didn’t think of love. I was, however, ashamed to have forgotten all about her arrival for almost half an hour that morning. The lapse made me feel inconstant… unfaithful, almost.