I glanced in confusion at Katya, who smiled impishly. “Ah… well, not in any very direct way, sir. But I’ve always been fascinated by the subject.”
Monsieur Treville’s face lit up. “Oh? Have you indeed? What aspects particularly interest you?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Paul said, leaning forward with mock interest. “Do tell us.”
Katya gave him a reproving frown, but he raised his eyebrows in blandest innocence, as I stammered out, “Well… the whole topic is fascinating. Particularly… ah… particularly the medical… ah…”
“The plague!” Monsieur Treville injected. “Yes, I am sure the arrival of the Black Death in ‘48/’49 would be of particular interest to a doctor.”
“That would be 13 48 and ‘49,” young Treville clarified helpfully.
Monsieur Treville frowned at his son and blinked several times. “Did someone say something about crocodiles? What’s all this about crocodiles?”
“I didn’t understand that completely myself, Father,” Paul confessed. “Something to do with the Great Plague perhaps. Could you clarify that for us, Doctor?”
“No, no, young man,” Monsieur Treville said laying his hand on my arm and chuckling. “Rats! Rats and lice. Nothing to do with crocodiles at all. Possibly the fact that the plague entered Europe through Mediterranean ports gave birth to this fiction about crocodiles—though I confess that I’ve never run across the legend myself. You wouldn’t happen to recall where you read it, would you?”
Katya came to my rescue, diverting the conversation into light channels until dinner had progressed to the fruit and a disk of the strong, salty local cheese, at which Paul poked distastefully with the tip of his knife. I could sense that Katya was pleased with me, pleased with my evident liking for her father and with his delight at having someone new with whom to talk. My romantic imagination staged domestic daydreams concerning an at-home dinner with the brother-in-law and father-in-law visiting our modest (but charming) home, and in neglect of my social responsibilities I allowed myself to become lost in these pleasant reveries to such a depth that I was quite surprised when Monsieur Treville’s voice intersected my egoistic wanderings.
“…or don’t you agree, Doctor?”
“Ah… yes. Yes! I do indeed agree. Yes, indeed.”
Monsieur Treville’s eyes sparkled with interest. “That’s fascinating, Doctor. I need hardly tell you that very few modern scholars of medieval life share our view on this. Would you mind telling me what evidence brought you to this opinion?”
“What evidence? Ah… well, not so much any given single bit of evidence as… ah… as the general impression I… ah…”
Katya earned my undying gratitude when she placed her hand on my arm and interrupted, saying, “Now you two mustn’t spend the whole evening talking about things that Paul and I don’t understand.”
“I don’t mind,” Paul said. “In fact, I’d be delighted to hear Montjean’s response.” He smiled at me broadly. Then he made a sudden motion, and I realized that Katya had kicked him under the table.
“No,” she said, “I won’t have it. We shall take our coffee in the salon like well-bred people, and we shall talk of trivial and amusing things, as we were taught to do when we were young.” She stood and offered me her arm. “Dr. Montjean?”
For half an hour, as we four sat around the good fire in the hearth, Katya was as good as her word, guiding the conversation from one subject to another with such subtle skill that each of us—even Paul—had his moment to shine forth and appear witty and well-informed. Brandy was served with the coffee, and I noticed that Paul refilled his glass more often than was wise and ended with sitting deep in his chair with a leaden and dour attitude that bordered on the inhospitable, but my delight in and admiration of Katya over-weighed my feelings towards her brother and I was left with the impression that I had never passed a more pleasant and entertaining evening, though I could recall no single event of particular moment.
Paul broke the spell by rising suddenly and saying, “I’m afraid that Katya should be going to bed soon.”
“Really, Paul—” she protested.
“No, no Kiki.” Paul crossed to her and put his arm around her waist. “You’ve risked catching a cold, being out in the rain. Now you must go to bed, pull the covers up to your nose, and count crocodiles. You’ll be asleep in no time. Father and I will entertain Dr. Montjean.”
“Have you been out in the rain?” Monsieur Treville asked Katya with concern.
“Not really, Father,” Paul answered. “Just a figure of speech.”
Monsieur Treville blinked. “Figure of speech?”
“Yes, and a silly and ineffective one too. I promise I’ll never use it again. Now, up you go, Kiki.”
“Good-night, Papa,” Katya said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “And good-night to you, Jean-Marc Montjean.” She held her hand out for me to press. I was pleased at the way she had devised of using my given name so soon in our acquaintance. “Will I have the pleasure of seeing you so soon?”
“Never fear,” Paul said. “The doctor has promised—or perhaps it was a threat—to come by tomorrow to bind up my wounds. No doubt we shall be able to persuade him to take a cup of tea with us.”
“I shall look forward to it, Mlle Treville,” I said, my eyes full of her.
“So shall I.”
After she left, Monsieur Treville settled back in his chair as though for a good long talk and asked me how long I had been devoted to the study of the Black Death….
….An hour later, when finally Paul was seeing me to the door, the rain had lightened to a frying hiss on the gravel outside. He had not been sparing of the brandy, and there was something beyond nonchalance in the way he leaned against the archway of the hall door.
“You’ve done well, Montjean. I am sure Father hasn’t the slightest hint that your interest in us is not solely medical. That bespeaks an admirable streak of duplicity in your nature. You really should cultivate this gift, not only as a means of surviving in a world of rogues and merchants, but as leavening in a personality that is altogether too serious and sincere to be interesting.”
“Are you always this uncivil, Treville?”
“Not always. You bring out the best in me.”
“I’m delighted to be of service. May I wish you a goodnight?”
“Please do.”
Before the trap had reached the end of the poplar lane, the rain stopped, and as the mare walked comfortably back to Salies through the night air rinsed clean of dust, I troubled over several events of the evening. There was that strange, tense conversation I had overheard between Katya and Paul. And there was Paul’s warning that his father must know nothing of my interest in Katya while, so far as I could judge, the old man was a gentle pedant with no harm in him. Perhaps most troubling of all was the fact that I rather liked Paul Treville, although I had every reason not to. Was it his physical resemblance to Katya that drew me to forgive his adolescent discourteousness? I didn’t think so. Not that alone, anyway. There was a kind of desperate melancholy in the man, not quite concealed by his waspish wit, that made me sympathize with a person of lucid if brittle intelligence who had no outlet for his energies and mind in our rural corner of the Basque country.
Why did he accept this self-imposed isolation from the world he was born to, the world in which his gifts and talents were valued? Why, indeed, were the Trevilles living in an ancient heap of stone so far from their Paris? Katya had made an allusion to their being here for their health, but I could see no evidence of ill-health, and I could see every evidence, in Monsieur Treville’s eagerness to share ideas and concepts with me, of a hunger for the civilized society they had left.
In a selfish way, of course, I was delighted that they were here in Salies. How else would I ever have met Katya?