“No, of course not. But that’s not the point. If Paul was making arrangements, then we must go.”
“Why, in the name of God?”
“It has happened before. When we had to leave Paris to come here.”
“What happened in Paris?”
She frowned and shook her head curtly.
“What is your family running from?”
She looked at me, then smiled faintly. “Oh, like most families, we have skeletons in our closet. I make no bones about that. Oh, come now, that wasn’t such a bad pun. If it didn’t merit a laugh, it was at least worth a smile. Or, at very least, a groan.”
“I don’t feel like smiling.”
“Don’t take things so seriously, Jean-Marc.” She rose. “Now I must return home. I’m sure Paul will need help with all the details of moving. But you must come take tea with us this afternoon. Please. If we have only a week together, it would be stupid of us not to use it well.”
I sighed and nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I’d be pleased to take tea with you.”
“Good. Until soon?”
“Yes. Until soon.”
She wheeled her bicycle across the square, pausing to bestow a warm smile and a nod of greeting to a brace of ladies who had obviously been gossiping about us and who were flustered at the familiarity of this hatless girl who was clearly no better than she ought to be, with her public morning assignations, the seeming openness of which did not fool them in the least.
At tea, Monsieur Treville was in a cheerful and loquacious mood, which was the salvation of the small talk, as my thoughts were elsewhere, Paul was so icy and withdrawn that he forsook even his habitual baiting of his father’s mental obliquity, and Katya was content to sit back and smile on the three men in turn, rather maternally and distantly, it seemed to me.
“So this is what my children do every afternoon while I toil in the service of Clio, is it? Sit about and drink tea. Prodigal. Well, I suppose it’s harmless enough. But you mustn’t let my ne’er-do-well offspring seduce you away from your studies of the plague, Dr. Marque.” He chuckled at the very idea of any devotee of medieval studies being vulnerable to such temptation.
“Dr. Montjean, Papa,” Katya corrected.
“Montjean? But I am quite sure you referred to him as Dr. Marque last night during supper. I remember quite clearly. Dr. Jean Marque, you said.”
Paul sighed. “It was the night before last, Father. And the doctor was referred to by his first name, Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc Montjean. It’s a hard name to forget… try though one may.”
Monsieur Treville frowned and shook his head in doubt. The possibility that Katya might have used my given name on such short acquaintance did not occur to him. “My children think me a muddy-minded dotterer, Doctor, because I seldom bother to pay attention to their chatter. But my memory is sound as the gold franc—not that the franc’s all that sound just now! Eh?”
“May I ask,” Paul said, “why we are dwelling at such length on the good doctor’s name? Surely we are not that impoverished of conversation.”
Monsieur Treville waved his hand at him. “Ah, but names can be confounding. And important too. We deal with things, not as they are, but as we apprehend them to be. Therefore, to a rather frightening degree, things are what we call them. Take my daughter here, Doctor. Baptized and presented to God under the perfectly satisfactory nomen, Hortense—my own mother’s name. Then one day I looked up from my work and there was a Katya living with me. Just like that, overnight, my Hortense disappeared and was replaced by a Katya.” He reached over and took his daughter’s hand. “But I’ve got used to this changeling who replaced my Hortense. She’s a good enough girl in her own way. Image of her mother, Doctor—well, both of them are, in fact. They had the good fortune to get their features from their mother. A woman of exceptional beauty.” Monsieur Treville’s voice softened and grew distant. “…An exceptional woman… exceptional woman…”
Katya spoke in a bantering tone designed to tug him back from melancholy. “I wish we’d got our brains from you, Papa.”
“What? Oh, you’re both intelligent enough. A little lazy-minded, perhaps. Victims of acedia, perhaps. But perfectly intelligent. Yes, yes, mistakes like this one of the doctor’s name are common enough, even in academics. One scholar makes a mistake—a wrong spelling, perhaps, or something even more egregious—then other scholars copy it, then the next fellow sees it three or four times in different sources, and the error takes on the weight of fact. That’s why one must do his own primary research, as I am sure you have found in your own studies of the Black Death, Doctor.” The bit in his mouth, Monsieur Treville leaned forward and spoke to me confidentially, as an academic ally. “I recall a case involving a noted scholar—member of the Academy, no less, so I’ll withhold his name to avoid scandal. He quoted the population of the village of Alos in 1250 as ‘three thousand souls.’ Three thousand! As everyone knows, Alos had no more than three hundred at the time. But there it was—print upon a page and therefore truth irrefutable! Three thousand! How many future studies will be ruined by that careless extra zero? For instance, if some scholar were to note that a hundred eighty-five residents of Alos were killed by your Great Plague, he would assume that the village had got off lightly. When in fact more than half of the population perished!”
“You really must write an article on the evils of the stray zero, Papa,” Paul said.
“Oh, I have. Not precisely by that title; but I have. And it was well received, if I do say so myself.”
I smiled. “It is difficult for me, sir, to imagine anyone devoting study to Alos.”
“Do you know the village?”
“I know it well. It is one of the three villages that constitute the commune in which I was born.”
“How fascinating,” Paul said without energy.
“Indeed it is,” Monsieur Treville said. “Alos is one of the few places where the pageant of Robert le Diable is still performed.”
“That’s correct, sir. It’s performed each year during the fкte. Just about this time of year, come to think of it.”
“No, really?” Paul said. “Just about this time of year? The famous fкte d’Alos? My, my, my.”
“I’d give a great deal to witness it,” Monsieur Treville said. “Last vestige of that particularly Basque integration of pagan rite with Christian intrusions. I’ve often thought that—hello! What in the world is this?” He indicated an object on the tea tray that had just caught his eye.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Katya said. “A gift from Doctor Montjean. I must have set it on the tray absent-mindedly.”
“But… it looks like an ordinary pebble!”
Katya glanced at me. “Well, one might say that, Papa. But it could also be thought of as a bit of the universe.”
As Monsieur Treville examined the poor pebble closely, I studiously avoided Paul’s eyes, where I knew I would find sarcastic amusement.
“Yes, I suppose it could be thought of that way,” Monsieur Treville mused, returning the pebble to Katya, who slipped it into her reticule unobtrusively. “I had no idea you were also interested in geology, Doctor. Odd mixture of pursuits: geology and medieval plagues. Beware the attraction of the pure sciences. They are pure only in the way an ancient nun is—bloodless, without passion. No, no. Stick to the humanistic studies where, though the truth is more difficult to establish and the proofs are more fragile, yet there is the breath of living man in them.”
“Dr. Marque,” Paul said. “Oh, excuse me. I meant to say, Dr. Montjean. Damn that stray zero! Doctor, don’t you think it’s time you checked my bandages, or whatever it is you do to earn your fee? That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“Ah… certainly. You will excuse us?”