“But, obviously, she eventually learned the truth. How did that happen?”

She frowned and seemed to struggle to comprehend this dangerous paradox. Then her face became heavy and expressionless and she asked, in the strained rasp of Paul’s voice, “What makes you believe Katya ever discovered the whole truth?”

How could I explain that I knew because it was she who was telling me? I sensed this was a dangerous line to pursue, so I retreated and sought another avenue that might bring her to a liberating understanding of all that had happened. “So your father confessed to having killed the young man accidentally in order to protect Katya from discovering that she had done it. What happened then?”

“What happened? To Father, you mean?”

“Very well. What happened to your father?”

“His worry about Katya, and the dangerous legal inquiry into the boy’s death, drained his spirit. I knew he could never withstand another such incident. That’s why I brought them here, out of harm’s way. And when it began to happen all over again, with you– Why in God’s name did you persist in your attentions to Katya?! I warned you again and again! Goddamn you, Montjean! Goddamn you and your ******* interference!”

She used a term that even Paul would never have uttered in public. I lowered my eyes and said nothing. And I remembered with a shudder how Mlle M., at the Passy asylum, would occasionally burst out in gutter profanity so shockingly dissonant with her personality and breeding.

When she spoke again, her voice was calm, even hollow. “Then last night, Father heard the shot and ran out to find you lying on the ground, clutching at his boot and begging him to help you. He stood there, stunned. It had happened again! His daughter… his Hortense who looked so like his beloved wife… was totally, irremediably insane. He recoiled from you, lying there, pleading, the proof of Katya’s diseased mind. He turned away and walked back to his study as though in a trance. He sat at his desk; he carefully rephrased a footnote he had been working on; in the margin he cited a confirming cross-reference; then he closed his notebook and… and he shot himself. Shot himself. Just… just…” Her voice trailed off.

“How do you know what happened in the garden? Were you there, Paul?”

She frowned at me, as though slightly annoyed by the irrelevancy of my question. “What? What do you mean?”

I had found a little chink in the welding of Katya’s personality to Paul’s, and I hoped it would be possible to pry them apart gently, without destroying the fiction that was sustaining her. “How can you describe what your father did in the garden, Paul? Were you there?”

She shook her head. “No, I… I was in my room… asleep.”

“I see. Then how do you know what happened?”

“Well… well, Katya was standing right there in the shadow. She hadn’t moved from the spot after leveling the target pistol at you and pressing the trigger.” Her brow wrinkled with the strain of trying to understand. Then she looked at me defiantly, her eyes harried, as she said quickly, “Katya must have told me about it.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. Yes. She must have. How else—what does it matter how– Oh yes, I remember. Katya woke me to tell me that you were lying wounded in the garden. That’s when she explained what had happened. I dressed hastily and rushed down.”

“Your father was still alive at that time?”

“Yes. He was still in his study, writing. It wasn’t until Paul returned that he found him. Dead by his own hand. And he—”

“What? Paul returned to find him?”

Her eyes flickered. She drew a quick breath but continued airily, “Yes, I found him when I returned from bringing you to the clinic at Salies. I carried him up to his bedroom so that Katya wouldn’t blunder in and discover him looking… with the side of his face all… Afterwards, I searched for her everywhere, and at last I found her sitting in her wicker chair in the summerhouse—sitting here just as I am—and I knew at first glance that something had ruptured in her mind when she shot you, allowing all the terrible, insupportable truth to rush in. She remembered everything. The rape of Hortense. Killing poor Marcel. And she told me all about it, calmly, succinctly… almost clinically.”

“But, Paul, listen. Try to understand this. If she can remember all of it, then there’s a chance for her to recover! Don’t you see that? With time and professional help, she might be able to live a full life with someone who loves her!”

But she closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. The floodgates to all that pain and horror opened for only a moment… a confusing and horrible moment… but even as she described events to me, the details began to grow fuzzy… distorted. The shock of seeing you on the ground, of thinking you were dying, opened the old wounds for a moment, but the searing rush of agonizing memories cauterized them again, sealing the flow, closing them… but not healing them.” She looked at me, her eyes sad and gentle, and she spoke in her own voice. “She had wanted so desperately to protect you from a danger she sensed but did not understand. She even told you that she did not love you, hoping to drive you away, keep you safe. Can you imagine what pain it must have cost her to look into your eyes… those black Basque eyes… and tell you that she did not love you?” The hint of a minor-key smile touched the corners of her eyes as they looked into mine for a long affectionate moment. Then her expression hardened, and when she spoke it was in Paul’s harsh voice. “Then quite suddenly, while she was trying to explain to me why she had been forced to shoot you—vague, shattered babble about your having made her feel evil, shameful pleasure… and something about the rape… and some incoherent business about eyes squirting like grapes from their skins—quite suddenly she turned on me, shrieking and beating her fists against my chest. She accused me of stealing her place in the world! Of being born a man, invulnerable to rape, when it was she who should have been born the man! After all, she was older! She screamed out at the injustice of it! And she used words I didn’t know she had ever heard, words that would have made a dock worker blush. She struggled violently against my efforts to hold her in my arms, and she tried to hit me in the face with her fists, all the while sobbing, ‘I should have been the brother! I should have been the boy!’ Then, worn out and empty of hate, she sagged in my arms. And when she lifted her head and I saw her face, stained with spent fury, the eyes wild and haunted, I knew… I knew the flood of memories had passed and were lost forever from the light. Katya was gone. As Hortense had gone before her. She wrenched herself free from my grasp and ran up to the house. Katya was gone, Montjean… gone.” Tears filled Katya’s eyes and her lips trembled. She was weeping silently for the lost Hortense; and Paul was weeping for the lost Katya.

I remained silent until the tears stopped flowing and she sat, staring out across the overgrown garden, her lashes still wet, indifferent to the tear streaks on her soft cheeks.

“You followed her to the house, Paul?”

She looked at me with an expression between bewilderment and annoyance, as though surprised to find me there. “What?”

“You followed Katya to the house?”

She nodded. “Yes… yes…” She drew a long, fatigued sigh.

“And…?”

“It occurred to me in a flash that she might find Father’s body, with his face all… missing, you know. The shock of it might… Oh, Jesus! I burst into the house after her, calling her name. As I ran into the hall, I saw her. She was standing on the landing of the stairs. In her hand was the pistol I had brought up to Father’s room when I carried him to his bed. She looked down at me… cold yet desperate eyes. And, Montjean—Jean-Marc—she had done something very strange, very frightening….” She stopped speaking abruptly, and she sat stiff and unmoving.

The sun had slipped low in the sky, and patterns of leaf dapple over her face covered one eye with a patch of dark shadow, while the other stared dully ahead. The vision scurried eddies of fear down my spine.

“What was it, Paul? What had she done that was so frightening?”

She frowned and shook her head, her eyes clouded and confused. “I don’t understand it. I looked down on her and realized that… that she had somehow…”

“You looked down on her? But she was on the landing, wasn’t she, and you were below in the hall.”

“No. No. You see, that was the hideous thing she had done! She had somehow…”

Her eyes searched the space before them, as though trying to see the events again, trying to understand them.

“She… she burst into the hall, calling out her own name. Then she saw me standing on the landing, and she looked up at me with fear in her eyes, as though I were going to harm her! And, Montjean… she was wearing my clothes. She was pretending to be me! Why, she even—Christ, it was ghastly!—she had even cut her hair! I had just come from finding Father on his bed… horrible… ugly. I had the pistol in my hand, and she stared up at it, as though I intended to shoot her. Then suddenly it became clear to me what she was trying to do. Poor dear! Poor lost Katya was trying to find someplace to hide, someplace to flee to. Years before, she had learned the trick of surviving by dying. She had become Katya, and allowed the soiled, ruined Hortense to die. But now she could no longer be Katya. She knew now that Katya was mad, that Katya had killed the young man in Paris, that Katya had shot you down in the garden because you had made her feel disgusting, shameful pleasure! And when we were children, we used to play tricks on visitors, pretending both to be the same person, to be two places at once. Poor Katya was trying desperately to survive! She was trying to become me! She had no other place to go! But what was to happen to me, Montjean? If Katya became me, where was I to go? For God’s sake! It wasn’t my fault that I had been born the boy!