The Wine of Solitude (8 page)

Outside, it was getting dark; the sky was a beautiful velvet colour with luminous fountains, sweet smells, magnolias in blossom, a soft, caressing wind. Hélène looked out of the window, pressing her face against the glass panes; it was a night that seemed too intense, too sensual. ‘Not for children,’ she thought with a smile. She felt small, lost, guilty. (Why? I won’t get caught. It’s not my fault. I was with Papa. He wasn’t with me for long, though …) It was eight o’clock in the evening. Some cars stopped in front of the Café de Paris; men in tuxedos got out, women in ball gowns. Beneath a balcony she could hear the sound of
mandolins, kisses, muffled laughter. On the roads near the harbour dim lights cast shadows along the streets and all the cranes from the coastline converged, making their way towards the casino.

It was nine o’clock now … ‘I’m hungry,’ thought Hélène. ‘What can I do? I just have to stay here; they won’t let me into the gaming rooms.’ How many people like her were waiting reluctantly? The entrance hall was full of anxious, tired women who waited patiently, without complaining. She felt strangely old and resigned, resigned to spend the night right there on the bench if she had to. If only her eyes wouldn’t keep closing beneath her heavy eyelids. Time was passing so slowly … yet the hands of the clock on the Casino wall moved strangely quickly. It was nine-thirty just a little while ago, the time when she normally went to bed. But now the hands of the clock had moved forward, nine-forty-five, ten o’clock … To stop herself from falling asleep, she began pacing back and forth. A woman was coming and going in the darkness, waving a pink feather boa. Hélène looked at her. She felt that her mind was clearer because she was hungry; it mysteriously allowed her to see deep into the life of this nameless woman to such an extent that she could feel the woman’s weariness and anxiety within her own soul. She was so hungry … She breathed in the smell of soup that was being brought upstairs in a tureen from the kitchens of the Café de Paris.

‘I feel like a suitcase forgotten at the left luggage office,’ she thought, trying to make fun of herself.

Obviously this was all so comical, so very comical … She looked around her. There were no other children: they were all asleep in bed. A caring hand had closed the windows and
curtains. They couldn’t hear the mumblings of the old man accosting the shop girls; they couldn’t see the couples kissing on park benches.

‘Mademoiselle Rose wouldn’t have forgotten all about me, not Mademoiselle Rose. It’s obvious that I’m still deluding myself,’ she thought bitterly. ‘She’s the only one in the world who loves me …’

Eleven o’clock. In the moonlight the city looked pale, weary, strange, as in a dream … Hélène walked and walked, her eyes half closed with exhaustion, counting the lights in the houses along the harbour to prevent herself from falling asleep. Really, now! She mustn’t whine. Was she going to start crying like some child left behind in a park? Now the last few horrid-looking women were coming out of the Casino, clutching their bags to their bosoms, their make-up melting down their faces. And behind them? Her father: his white hair, his features lit up with the inner flame of joy and passion she so admired.

He took her hand and squeezed it hard. ‘My poor darling, come along. I’d forgotten about you. Let’s go home right away.’

She didn’t dare tell him she was hungry. She didn’t want to see him shrug his shoulders and say with a sigh, as her mother would have done, ‘Children … they’re such a burden!’

‘Did you at least win, Papa?’

Her father’s lips trembled with a little smile that was both joyful and sad. ‘Win? Yes, a little. But do people gamble in order to win?’

‘Oh? Well, why else, then?’

‘Just for the pleasure of playing, my girl,’ said her father
and the passionate blood that coursed through his veins seemed to flow hotly into Hélène’s hand; he looked at her with affectionate scorn. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re too young. And you’ll never understand. You’re just a woman.’

One evening in the autumn of 1914, Hélène, Mademoiselle Rose and the last of their luggage arrived in St Petersburg, where Hélène’s parents had already been living for several weeks.

As always, whenever Hélène had to see her mother again after a long absence, she trembled with apprehension, but she would have rather died than show it.

It was a particularly dismal, damp day in that sad season when there is hardly any sun, when you wake up, get up, eat and work by lamplight, and when soft, damp snow falls from a yellowish sky and is whipped away by a furious wind. How harshly it blew, that day, the biting north wind, and what a sickly odour of filthy water rose from the Neva.

The lights were lit along the streets. A thick fog wafted through the air like smoke. Hélène hated this strange city before she even arrived; now that she saw it, her heart ached as if something terrible was about to happen; she grasped Mademoiselle Rose’s coat nervously, trying to find the familiar warmth of her hand, then turned round and studied
her reflection in the carriage window with sad surprise: it was tense and pale.

‘What’s the matter, Lili?’ asked Mademoiselle Rose.

‘Nothing. I’m cold. This city is horrible,’ Hélène murmured in despair. ‘And in Paris, the trees are all golden now.’

‘But we couldn’t have gone to Paris anyway, my poor little Hélène, because of the war,’ Mademoiselle Rose said sadly.

They fell silent; heavy drops of rain fell swiftly down the windows, like tears down someone’s face.

‘
She
didn’t even come to meet us at the station,’ Hélène said bitterly; she felt a wave of sadness and venom rise up through her soul, emerging from immeasurable depths, from a part of her being that was alien to her.

‘You mustn’t call her “she” like that,’ Mademoiselle Rose corrected her. ‘You should say “Mama”. “Mama didn’t come to meet us” …’

‘Mama didn’t come to meet us. She probably doesn’t want to see me that much,’ said Hélène quietly. ‘And I don’t want to see her either.’

‘Well, then, what are you complaining about?’ Mademoiselle Rose replied softly. ‘You’ve got a few more moments of peace.’

Hélène was struck by the mournful irony of her smile.

‘Do
they
have a car now?’ the little girl asked.

‘Yes. Your father has earned a lot of money.’

‘Really? And what about my grandparents? Will they ever come to live here?’

‘I don’t know.’

But Hélène knew very well that her grandparents would never leave the Ukraine; a regular allowance would keep them away from the Karols for ever. That was the very first thing Bella would do with her fortune.

When Hélène thought about her grandparents she felt pity, which she hated because it seemed cowardly to her. She tried to put them out of her mind, but in spite of herself, their faces surged up in her memory. She remembered them running quickly, stumbling along the platform as the train was leaving. Her grandmother was crying, which hardly made her look any different, the poor woman; but grandfather Safronov remained his usual swaggering self as he stood tall, waving his cane. ‘See you soon,’ he cried, his voice shaking. ‘We’ll come to see you in St Petersburg! Tell your mama to invite us soon.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it, poor Grandfather,’ murmured Hélène. She was certain the old man understood the situation even better than she did. She couldn’t imagine the fury and regret he would feel when going back home to the empty house, followed by his wife who moaned and wept quietly.

‘It’s my turn now,’ he would think. ‘My turn. Once I was the one who ran off to follow my whims, to enjoy myself, and left everyone behind. But now that I’m old and running out of steam, I’m the one who’s being left behind.’ And turning towards his wife, he deigned to wait for her for the first time in his life, even though he banged his cane against the ground and grumbled, ‘Come on, then, hurry up, slow coach!’

‘Exeunt’ grandfather and grandmother, Hélène thought with the dark sense of humour she’d inherited from her father.

Meanwhile, the car had stopped in front of a large, beautiful house. The Karols’ apartment was constructed in such a way that you could see right through all the rooms from the entrance hall; from the large open doors stretched a series
of gold-and-white reception rooms. Hélène bumped into the corner of an enormous white piano, caught sight of her pale, confused face reflected in the many mirrors and finally made her way into a smaller, darker room to her mother. She was standing up, leaning against a table; beside her sat a young man whom Hélène had never seen before.

‘Stuffed into a corset at three o’clock in the afternoon,’ thought Hélène, remembering her mother’s loose-fitting dressing gowns and dishevelled hair; she looked up and immediately spotted how many new rings she wore on her pale fingers, saw the elegant dress, her slim figure, how happy and passionate her harsh face looked; she saw all of it, enclosed it within her heart and never, ever forgot it.

‘Hello, Hélène. Was the train early, then? I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’

‘Hello, Mama,’ Hélène murmured.

She could never clearly pronounce both syllables whenever she said ‘Mama’; she had difficulty getting the word out through her pursed lips; she said the last syllable with a kind of quick groan that she wrenched from her heart.

‘Hello.’

The painted cheek lowered itself to her level; she kissed it carefully, instinctively trying to find a spot that wasn’t covered in powder or rouge.

‘Don’t mess up my hair. Aren’t you going to say hello to your cousin? Don’t you recognise your cousin, Max Safronov?’

A smile of triumph passed over Bella’s painted mouth, which was as thin and red as a trickle of blood.

Hélène suddenly remembered Lydia Safronov’s horse-drawn carriage, which she sometimes came across on the
streets of the town where she’d been born; she pictured the stiff woman with her little serpent’s head poking out of the fur stole she wore, recalled her dark eyes and the cold way she looked at her.

‘Max, here? Oh, they really must be very rich,’ she thought.

She was fascinated by how pale the young man looked; it was the first time she ’d ever seen the pale skin common to the inhabitants of St Petersburg, skin that seemed to have no blood at all, as pallid as a flower growing in a cave. He had a haughty, affected manner, a slim, delicate nose slightly curved into an eagle’s beak, wide green eyes and blond hair that was already receding towards his temples, even though he was barely twenty-four years old.

He lightly stroked Hélène’s cheek with one finger, then pinched her upraised chin. ‘Hello, my little cousin. How old are you now?’ he asked, clearly not knowing what he should say to her and staring at her with his bright, mocking green eyes.

He didn’t listen to the reply.

‘Look at how she stoops,’ he murmured. ‘You should stand up straight, my girl. When my sisters were your age they were a head taller than you and stood up as straight as an arrow.’

‘It’s true,’ cried Bella, annoyed, ‘just look at your posture! You should scold her, Mademoiselle Rose.’

‘The journey has worn her out.’

‘You always make excuses for her,’ said Bella, irritated.

She slapped Hélène between her slim shoulder blades as soon as they slumped. ‘You’re not making yourself look any more attractive, my poor girl. No matter how often you scold
her, she simply won’t listen. And see how sickly she looks, Max. Your sisters seem so athletic, so strong.’

‘It’s the English education, you know,’
Max murmured in English.
‘Cold baths and bare knees and not encouraged to feel sorry for themselves. She doesn’t look like you, Bella.’

‘How’s Papa?’
asked Hélène.

‘Well, Papa is fine; he came home very late, so you’ll see him before you go to bed; he’s very busy.’

They said no more. Hélène stood as stiff and straight as if she were in a parade, not daring to leave or sit down.

‘All right, then,’ Bella finally whispered, sounding weary and annoyed. ‘Don’t just stand there staring at me with your mouth hanging open. Go to your room; go and see your bedroom …’

Hélène went out, wondering with anguish what this stranger would bring her, happiness or misery, for she knew very well that from that moment on he would be the true master in her life. Later on, when she had grown up and remembered the way her mother’s face leaned towards his, their silence, her mother’s smile, everything she had noticed, guessed, sensed in a single look, she would sometimes think, ‘It’s impossible … I was only twelve, after all. The truth is that I came to understand gradually and now I’ve convinced myself that I saw everything in a flash. I understood what was happening little by little, and not in the space of an instant. I was a child and they didn’t say anything that day; they weren’t even sitting close to each other …’ And yet whenever a colour, a sound, a scent took her back to the past, whenever she managed to remember the exact shape of Max’s face when he was young, she immediately felt her child’s soul rise up within her, as if awakened after a long
sleep, whispering, passionately calling to her: ‘You also cast your childhood aside! Don’t you remember how you had the body of a young girl but a heart as old, as mature as it is today? So I clearly had good reason to feel sorry for myself: you had abandoned me, and even now you have forgotten all about me …’

On that day, that sad day, she knew for certain they were having an affair; she had feared for herself; she had immediately hated that scornful young man who had said, ‘She doesn’t look like you, Bella.’

‘What about Papa? I’m only thinking about myself, I’m so self-centred. He must be suffering, if he knows …’ she thought, and at once a bitter feeling filled her heart.

‘Well, then, if no one really cares about me I’m going to have to love myself …’

She walked over to Mademoiselle Rose. ‘Tell me something.’

‘Yes?’

‘That boy, my cousin … and her … I’ve guessed right, haven’t I?’

Mademoiselle Rose flinched and pursed her pale little lips in a violent attempt at denial. ‘No, no, Hélène,’ she murmured feebly.