The Summer of Katya by Trevanian Read Free Book Online Page A

is rumored to be something of a scholar, with all of the stigma appropriately attached to that nefarious craft. The son is accounted a wastrel, a snob, and—as he has not been caught climbing out of a peasant girl’s window—there are hints that he may be a bit of a pd. After all, he comes from Paris, and we all know what that means. But it is the daughter—dare I call her your young lady?—who has attracted most of the old crones’ attention. She has been seen walking alone in the fields from time to time. Walking alone.” Doctor Gros pumped his thick eyebrows up and down to underline the salacious implications of that. “Furthermore, it is said that she rides a bicycle. A bicycle, no less! Stare hard enough at that fact and you’ll find double—nay triple!—entendre. Also, she constantly wears white dresses, and we all know what that means. As she has never been observed doing anything in the least compromising, the gossips reason that she must do these things in secret. All in all, I’m afraid I must tell you that the Trevilles are the scandal of the community. Our local pride is bruised by their having chosen this corner of France in which to hide from whatever their sins and indiscretions may be. It’s as much as saying that we’re a Godforsaken, out-of-the-way backwater! And the fact that this is an accurate description of our community adds to the sting of it. There it is, Montjean. In a capsule, this is what is known and rumored about the Trevilles. And in addition there is the matter of the mother—whom no one has met and who is therefore rumored to be a dwarf, a Protestant, and left-handed. But I have a feeling this description is based on rather sketchy evidence.”
    “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 caf 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