The Wine of Solitude (17 page)

‘There might not be enough room for everyone,’ said Reuss. ‘Women and children first.’

But everyone said, ‘No. We all go together.’

Bella took Max’s hand. ‘All together …’

Only then did she remember that Hélène was there. ‘Do you have your coat? And a shawl?’ she asked quickly. ‘I still have to think of everything for a girl your age.’

Hélène made her way over to Reuss. ‘Where are you going? Can’t we go together?’

‘No. We have to go our separate ways at the edge of the forest so we don’t attract attention, and everyone will go with his own family.’

‘I understand,’ she murmured.

Their carriages were waiting, lined up outside the door, just as when they were going to dance with the Red Guard, all now dead and buried.

The horizon was lit up with distant fires, and the pine trees covered in snow looked pink beneath the soft grey sky of the early dawn.

‘This is goodbye,’ said Fred. He secretly pressed his lips against Hélène’s cold cheek.

‘Goodbye,’ he said softly, ‘my poor darling …’

They walked away from each other.

After a long, exhausting journey the Karols ended up in Helsinki in the spring; it was a bright, peaceful, happy little town. Lilac bushes were in blossom in every street. It was the time of year when the sky is never dark, but keeps a milky light until morning, like the soft transparency of dusk in May.

Hélène was sent to board with Fru Martens, the widow of a Finnish minister, a respectable person with many virtues and many children. She was a short, thin, supple woman with blond hair, dry skin and a pinkish nose that had been frozen some time in the past and was now chapped and purplish in the middle. She taught Hélène German and read her Mutter Sorge out loud. While she read, Hélène watched a little pointy bone move around beneath the yellowish skin of her old neck, as prominent as an Adam’s apple; she didn’t listen to a word, daydreaming instead.

She wasn’t unhappy, just bored to tears. It wasn’t only Fred Reuss she missed. Quite the opposite, she had forgotten Fred Reuss strangely quickly. But she missed the freedom,
the open spaces, the danger, the full life she had led that she couldn’t erase from her memory.

In the evening, when the little Martenses sang
‘Tannenbaum, oh, Tannenbaum, wie grün sind deine Blätter!’
she listened with pleasure to their soft, sonorous voices, but at the same time she would think, ‘Oh, for the sound of cannons! For danger, anything just to feel alive! To live! Or to be a child like the others … But no, it’s too late for that. I’m only sixteen, but my heart is filled with poison.’

The autumn moon spread its cool, clear light over the little sitting room and its ornamental green pot plants; she walked over to the window and looked at the bay shimmering in the darkness.

‘I want my revenge. Will I have to die without ever getting back at them?’

Ever since the night when the idea first crossed her mind she continually embellished it, enjoyed it.

‘To take her Max away from her! To make both of them suffer the way they made me suffer! I didn’t ask to be born. Oh, how I would have preferred never to have been born. No one gave a thought to me, that’s for sure. They brought me into this world and left me to grow up alone. Well, that’s not enough! It’s a crime to have children and not give them an atom, a crumb of love. I can’t give up the idea of revenge. Don’t make me, Lord! I think I would rather die than give up that idea. To take her lover away from her! Me, little Hélène!’

Only on Sundays did Hélène see her mother and Max. They would arrive together, stay a short time, then leave. Sometimes Max would place a few marks on the table: ‘You can buy yourself some sweets …’

After he left she would give the money to the servants and it would take a very long time to stop her entire body from quivering with hatred.

In the meantime she noticed that something had changed between her mother and Max: it was a subtle change and difficult to define. But the way they spoke to one another was different and so were their silences. They had always quarrelled, but now the tone of their arguments was more bitter, full of impatience and anger.

‘They’re becoming a married couple!’ Hélène mused.

She cruelly studied her mother’s face for a long time; she could watch her as much as she liked: her mother’s harsh eyes never fell on her; Bella seemed completely transfixed by Max; she would eagerly scrutinise every change in his features, while he looked away, as if he could barely stand her looking at him.

Bella’s face was beginning to age; its muscles were slackening; Hélène could see wrinkles beneath the powder and rouge that the make-up filled in without being able to hide; they stood out as deep, fine lines at the corners of her eyes, her lips and on her temples. The painted surface of her skin was cracking, losing its smooth, creamy texture, becoming coarser, rougher. On her neck appeared the triple creases that meant she was in her forties.

One day they arrived after a longer, more serious quarrel than usual: Hélène could tell immediately by the sad, annoyed expression on her mother’s face, by the quivering of her tense mouth.

Bella angrily took off her fur coat and threw it on to the bed. ‘It’s so hot in here. Are you working hard, Hélène? You did nothing all last year. Look at what a mess
your hair is. You look five years older than you are with your hair pulled back like that, I have no desire to be burdened with a daughter to marry off. Oh, Max, stop turning round in circles like a caged animal! Hélène, ask them to bring us some tea.’

‘At this hour?’

‘Well, what time is it, then?’

‘Seven o’clock. I was expecting you earlier.’

‘You can surely wait an hour for your mother. Ah, how ungrateful children are. Just like everyone else in the world. There’s not a single soul who loves you, who feels sorry for you! Not one …’

‘Are you really someone we should feel sorry for?’ Hélène asked softly.

‘I’m dying of thirst,’ said Bella. She got a glass of water and drank it quickly. Her eyes were full of tears. When she put down the glass, Hélène saw her secretly shape her eyebrows with her finger and look anxiously at her face in the mirror: the tears were damaging her make-up.

‘This is becoming unbearable!’ Max muttered through tight lips.

‘Oh, really, is that what you think? And what about the night I spent waiting for you, while your friends and those women …’

‘What women?’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘You’d like to lock me behind closed doors so that I see, hear and live for nothing but you.’

‘Before …’

‘Yes, exactly, that was before! How can you not understand? We’re only young once, only free once. It might be all right to throw everything out of the window, your
family, your past, your future, once … at twenty-four. But life goes on, people change, become more serious, wiser. Whereas you … you … You’re tyrannical, egotistical, demanding. You make yourself unbearable to others and to yourself. I’ve been unhappy recently, you can see that very well. I’m sad, tired of it all, irritable. You take no pity on me. Yet all I ask of you is one thing. Leave me alone! Don’t have me trailing behind you like a dog on a leash. Let me breathe!’

‘But what on earth is wrong with you? Imagine, Hélène. He hasn’t had any letters from his mother, no letters from his beloved mother. But is that my fault? I’m asking you, is that my fault?’

Max struck his fist angrily against the table. ‘Is this any business of the child’s? Oh, enough, enough of your tears! I swear to you, Bella, if you start crying again I’m going to leave and you’ll never see me again as long as I live. At least, in the past, you were as hard on yourself as you were on everyone else. That was rather attractive,’ he said more quietly. ‘In my heart I called you Medea. But now …’

‘Yes,’ mused Hélène, silent and invisible in the dark room, ‘you’re getting old. Every day that passes robs you of a weapon and adds one to my armoury. I’m young; I’m only sixteen, I’ll steal your lover from you and, sadly, it won’t take very long or need much cunning. It won’t be very difficult. And when I’ve made you really suffer, I’ll send him packing, because, to me, he’ll always be the Max I hated from my childhood, the enemy of that poor dead woman. Oh, how I will avenge her. But I still need to wait a while longer …’

She had vague memories of those childhood evenings: coming home from the park, dying of thirst as she walked beneath the shady lime trees, breathing in their perfume and dreaming of the cold milk that was waiting for her in a blue bowl; she remembered how she would half close her eyes to quench the thirst within her by imagining the sweet, cool liquid and the feeling of ice-cold milk flowing down her throat; how, once inside her room, she would hold the bowl in her hands for a long time, then bring it close to her face and moisten her lips with the milk before greedily drinking it down.

Suddenly the telephone rang. Hélène picked up the receiver; someone wanted to speak to Max. ‘It’s for you, Max,’ she said. ‘Some news from Constantinople. They’re calling from your house.’

Max grabbed the phone from her. She saw his face contort with pain. He listened for a moment without saying a word, then hung up and turned towards Bella. ‘Well,’ he said quietly, ‘you can be happy now. I’m all yours. I have nothing left, nothing apart from you. My mother has died. All alone, just as she predicted. Oh, I’ll be punished, terribly punished! That’s what it was, then, this weight that was suffocating me. She died in the hospital in Constantinople; strangers had to tell me she’d died. She was alone. But what about my sisters? What happened to them during that journey when I wasn’t at their side to protect them, to help them, while I was with you, with you and your family? I’ll never forgive you for this!’

‘But you’re mad!’ cried Bella in tears, leaning towards him, her face distorted as her make-up ran. ‘Is this my fault? Don’t be so cruel. Don’t push me away! You’re punishing me for
your own mistakes. Is that fair? Yes, I wanted you to stay, to keep you with me. What woman would have done anything different? Is it my fault?’

‘Everything is your fault!’ he shouted, angrily pushing her away.

She clung on to his clothes.

‘Oh, enough, enough!’ he said with hatred. ‘We’re not in the fifth act of some melodrama. Let go of me.’

He opened the door.

‘You won’t leave me!’ Bella cried. ‘You have no right to leave me. Forgive me, Max, forgive me. Listen, I’m stronger than you think. I have more power over you than you know! You couldn’t leave me …’

Hélène heard the door slam in the empty street. ‘Be quiet,’ she said, shaking with anger. ‘I’m begging you. We’re not in our own house.’

Bella wrung her hands in distress. ‘And that’s all you have to say to me? You can see how terribly upset I am. You have no pity. Won’t you even come and give me a kiss? Didn’t you see how he treats me? His mother died of breast cancer. Is that my fault?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said Hélène.

‘You’re sixteen. You understand life. You understand very well.’

‘I don’t want to understand …’

‘You miserable little egotist; you’re heartless. You’re my daughter, after all! Not a word of affection … Not even a kiss!’

Fru Martens put her head round the door. ‘Dinner is served. Come and sit down, Helenchen.’

Hélène leaned towards her mother for a kiss, but she turned
away; Hélène went and sat down with Fru Martens, who was already standing in front of the steaming soup tureen saying grace. Hélène’s heart was pounding with hatred and anger. ‘Oh,’ she mused, ‘it really would be too easy!’

The winds of war, which scattered men all over the world, carried the Karols to France in July 1919.

A few months before, Boris Karol had crossed Finland, lost five million Swedish crowns on the exchange rate, got two million back and left again for Paris, where his wife, his daughter and Max were to join him.

The ship approached the English coast the day after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed. It was as cold and foggy as an autumn night; the bright stars peeked out or appeared briefly from behind the clouds, only to be hidden again. There were lights everywhere: strings of paper lanterns linked the little coastal towns to form a single chain of flickering yellow light surrounded by a halo that shimmered gently through the damp sea fog. Fireworks shot into the sky, some exploding, others leaving only a coppery trail of smoke behind them. The wind carried snatches of military music towards the ship, but those heroic fanfares were unable to dispel the solemn melancholy of the long night: the exhilaration of the Armistice was long gone, leaving behind only a heavy, awkward attempt at joy.

An English pilot came on board; he was so drunk he could hardly walk. He had a Cockney accent.
‘Every man on land is married tonight, Ladies …’
he sang in a thick voice full of emotion.

To get away from him, Hélène went and hid in her favourite place, at the front of the ship, where the captain’s tan bulldog chewed quietly at the rigging. For a long time, she looked at the coast of France that bobbed gently up and down before her in the night. She looked at it with tenderness. Her heart had never beaten as joyously when she’d gone back to Russia. The coast of France seemed to be welcoming her, celebrating her arrival, with lights and fireworks flying high above the sea. The closer she got, the more she felt she recognised the smell of the wind; she closed her eyes. It had been five years since she’d seen that sweet land, the most beautiful place in the world. That brief length of time seemed like an eternity to her: she had seen so many things; she had changed from a child into a young woman. A world had crumbled, dragging innumerable men to their death, but she didn’t think about that, or rather a kind of fierce egotism kept watch within her to prevent her from thinking about it. With the merciless harshness of youth she rejected any morbid memories; she retained only an awareness of her strength, her age, her intoxicating power. Little by little, a feeling of primitive exhilaration filled her being. She jumped on to the pile of ropes better to breathe in the wind. The sea shimmered slightly, illuminated by the lights on the ship. She felt almost weightless, as if lifted into the air with joy, carried away by a force more powerful than herself. ‘This is youth,’ she mused, smiling. ‘There’s no better feeling in the world.’