“Oh? Do you think so?”
“I’m not very good at making apologies… lack of practice, I suppose.”
“I had the impression you were good at everything—kick-boxing, insulting guests, impugning the actions of your sister—all the social graces.”
He laughed. “You’ve been saving that one up for me, haven’t you?”
I almost smiled. In fact, I had been rehearsing what I would say to him the next time we met.
We passed out of town and rode for a time in silence along the road to Etcheverria before he turned to me and said, “Look, Montjean. I am aware that Katya takes pleasure in your company. And it’s good for Father to have someone to listen to his interminable monologues. I love them both, and I couldn’t deny them this slight relief from the eternal boredom of this place. But I must insist on your promise that you will not engage in even the slightest intimacies with Katya—” I drew a breath to answer him, but he raised a hand, “—however innocent! However innocent. I don’t doubt your motives, Montjean. It’s just that my father… well, I’ve told you that my father must not suspect that you have the slightest interest in her. Don’t ask me for an explanation. It’s none of your affair.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Last night you were all acid and hate; this afternoon you’re all reason and friendliness. I must tell you that I consider your mercurial disposition most childish.”
He grinned at me. “Do you think so? Very well, I accept your diagnosis—under the condition that we drop the subject right now.”
During the rest of the ride, Paul entertained me with imitations of local merchants and dignitaries he had dealt with in Salies, and he displayed a capacity for scathing caricature that was surprising, together with a lack of sympathy for human foible that was not surprising at all.
“It’s a wonder you deal with merchants,” I said, “considering your contempt for them as a class.”
“One has no choice but to come into contact with them from time to time, old boy. After all, they own the world; not through right of birth or personal gifts, to be sure. They own the world because they bought it.”
“That may be true. But you must remember, it was your class that sold it to them.”
He was silent for a time, then he said quietly, “That’s true. How true.”
I was standing at the latticed arch of the summerhouse when I took from my pocket the pebble I had found and offered it to Katya.
“Oh, thank you, sir. I was afraid you had forgotten.” She put it into a little drawstring purse along with the others and dropped it into her reticule. “Did it ever occur to you that you are giving me the world… bit by bit?”
“I hope you don’t feel compromised by the enormous value of the gift.”
“Oh, it isn’t the value of the gift that compromises. It’s the intent behind it. Are your intentions of a compromising nature?”
“Very nearly.”
She laughed. “I must warn you that my integrity is so firm that mere pebbles cannot rock it.”
“That, my dear young lady, was a horrible, horrible pun.” I spoke with an avuncular sternness that allowed me to get away with calling her “dear.”
She frowned and pulled a sour face. “I fear that you lack a proper appreciation for the fine art of punning. It indicates a distasteful seriousness of mind. What are words made for, if not to play with?”
I placed my hand lightly over hers. “It is rumored that some people use them to express feelings of affection.”
Her eyes searched mine with troubled uncertainty. “Ah well… you can’t put much faith in rumors.” Then she slipped her hand from beneath mine and turned aside to look out over the garden, her gaze distant, her attention adrift. The sunlight dappling through the lattice warmed the cupric tones of her hair and reflected from the bodice of her white dress to radiate her face in a diffuse glow. I stood close beside her. The delicate silken down on her cheek… the sweet smell of her hair… the line of her throat… the curve of her breast…
She sighed as though returning reluctantly from some pleasant vision and turned to me. “You know, it was cruel and thoughtless of you to tell my brother and father about the spirit in this garden. Why did you do that?”
The question took me off balance. “I… for no reason at all. Just… you know… small talk. Conversation. Surely you know I would never intentionally do anything to pain you, Katya.”
She looked at me levelly for a moment, measuring, evaluating. Then a faint smile touched the corners of her eyes. “No, of course you wouldn’t. But just the same I do wish you hadn’t mentioned her.”
“I didn’t know she was a secret.”
“Not a secret, exactly. Just something of my own that I wasn’t prepared to share with anyone.”
“But you shared her with me.”
She considered that for a second, as though realizing it for the first time. “That’s true, I did, didn’t I?” She shrugged. “Ah well, there’s no point dwelling on it. The harm’s done.”
“What harm?”
“You saw how Paul reacted to the mention of the spirit, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. He seemed quite shaken.”
She nodded. “I knew he would be.”
“But why? Surely someone so cynical as your brother doesn’t believe in spirits. Why should he be shaken by the mention of one?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I really don’t know, Jean-Marc. But I knew instinctively that he would be.”
I sighed and broke off a twig from an overhanging bush and began to strip the leaves from it. “Katya? Is it a real spirit?”
“Real spirit? Isn’t that a contradiction of terms?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You and Paul delight in making up tales and playing on other peoples credulity. That’s why I ask if this spirit of yours is real.”
“Oh, she’s real enough.”
“Have you actually seen it?”
“Yes. Well… not quite. I’ve almost seen her out of the tail of my eye… a blur of white that vanishes when I focus on it, the way very dim stars do. But I am quite sure she’s here. I can sense her presence in a most palpable way. And it’s not the least a frightening or uncomfortable experience. She’s a gentle spirit… and so terribly sad. So terribly sad.”
“Sad? Why sad?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it was having it all come to an end when she was still so young.”
“Oh? How young is she?”
“Just fifteen and a half.”
I smiled. “Are you sure she’s not fifteen years, five months, and eleven days old? After all, you do have this particular gift for precise measurements.”
She looked at me with operatic seriousness. “Surely you know that it’s very difficult to judge age down to the number of days.”
I chuckled and let the game go, tossing away my stripped twig. “You know, Katya, I understand Paul’s discomfort with the idea of ghosts… spirits. Daydreamer and incurable romantic though you accuse me of being, my grip on reality is mundanely logical. I feel lost and a little uneasy when I consider forces and events that ignore such relationships as cause and effect, deduction and reason. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Are you saying that you don’t believe in the supernatural?”
“I choose not to. I don’t want to. The irrational frightens me. I would feel more at ease in the presence of a brutal and cruel man than I would in the presence of an insane one.”
She frowned. “Paul’s not insane.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting he is. I was only saying that I share his discomfort with the idea of the supernatural. I’m suggesting that he’s rigidly sane, like me. Inflexibly rational.”
“And you think that’s best?”
“Well… it’s safe.”
She considered this for a moment. “Yes, it’s safe… but limiting.”
We were silent for a time, as I sought a way to phrase the question that had been lurking in my mind all that day. “Katya? It is obvious that there’s something wrong. Something troubling you and your family.”