Dimanche and Other Stories (18 page)

“And the moon has to be out,” cried Lola. “Look, there it is!”

A glimmer of moonlight could be seen through the clouds.

“You also need a river or a spring,” said Klavdia.

Someone called out, “There’s a stream at the bottom of the garden!”

“But it’s always dry.”

“Not after a storm like this one.”

“Well …” began Klavdia Alexandrovna.

She wasn’t allowed to finish. Everyone dragged her off, and we little ones ran behind them, shrieking.

The garden was in deep shadow. We slid about on the wet grass, holding on to tree trunks; the girls were all laughing. The stream flowed through a clearing. Sometimes the clouds parted and the moon could be seen clearly.

“We must wait until it’s shining brightly,” said Klavdia.

She knelt down at the edge of the stream. I was right next to her and watched curiously. She looked worried, and her nostrils were pinched. She was obviously caught up in her own game.

“Look, little ones, here’s the spell,” she said, as the last of the clouds dispersed and we were bathed in a greenish light from the moon. “Watch carefully.”

From her finger she took a little ring that she always wore and that I had often noticed. It was a simple silver circle decorated with a dark red stone from the Caucasus. She turned it around so that it gleamed faintly in the moonlight. She hesitated for a moment, then murmured a few words I didn’t hear and briskly plunged
the ring three times into the stream, each time breaking the moon’s reflection. A small frog hidden in the grass started croaking and others answered it. I saw Lola shiver suddenly.

“Oh, how noisy those frogs are; they scared me! Is that your spell, Klavdia? Give me the ring, I want to try. How does it go?”

Klavdia whispered something in her ear. Lola took the ring, at first repeating the incantation so quietly that nobody could hear it. Then, at my aunt’s insistence, she recited out loud:

Flower of the lime, wild oats, and black mandrake
Thrice, thrice, thrice
,
   
Joy, I reject you
,
Innocent happiness, I reject you
,
May blind passion bind me forever to …

She stopped.

“To whom, Klavdia?” she asked, laughing.

And in a strange, cold voice, Klavdia answered, “Oh, to whomever you like. You know it’s only a bit of fun. Choose anyone. The one you
cannot
love, for example: the doctor.”

She was silent, and everyone went quiet, holding their breath. The doctor suddenly threw the cigarette he was holding into the water.

“What are you doing?” cried Klavdia sharply, close to tears.

“The only thing missing was fire. Water, fire, and moonlight are the three vital elements. Finish the spell, Lola.”

After a silence, the young girl’s voice could be heard again: “May blind passion bind me forever to Serge.”

“Go to him and put the ring on his finger,” ordered Klavdia.

Serge gently pushed her away.

“Leave me alone, Lola.”

But Nina and I danced around the couple like devils possessed. “Yes, yes, Uncle Serge, let her put the ring on your finger. Are you scared of spells? Are you scared of witchcraft, Uncle Serge?”

He shrugged and held out his hand. Of course the ring was too small. All the same, Lola managed to slide it as far as the joint of his little finger. But the doctor immediately tore it off as if it had burned him.

“Oh, give it to me now!” cried my aunt. “Let me have a go.”

Then in a faint voice, Klavdia answered, “There’s no point. The spell only works once.”

After this scene, she refused to have anything to do with any magic games. But we hadn’t forgotten the incantation, and ten times a day Nina and I would plunge a ring made out of woven grass into the stream, laughing wildly as we repeated, “Flower of the lime, wild oats, and black mandrake …”

Then, “May blind passion bind me forever to …”

And we would finish with the most ridiculous names: old Stefan, the
dvornik
who swept the courtyard; Ivan Ivanich, my mathematics tutor; or Jouk, the black dog.

But one day, Lola heard us. She rushed at us, grabbing Nina by the shoulders. “I won’t allow it, do you hear, you horrible child! I … forbid you …”

She was stammering; her face was convulsed; she pulled her sister’s ears and burst into tears. Nina was reduced to silence, her eyes wide with astonishment.

“Is she mad?” she asked me, when Lola had fled. “What’s the matter with her?”

I had no idea. I suggested a game of hide-and-seek.

Time passed. I cannot remember if it was two months, or six months, or more. One evening, we needed some material to make dolls’ clothes: we usually got some from Klavdia Alexandrovna. I went running into her room. She was standing by the window, her hands clasped to her breast, looking out at the dark garden. The lamps had not been lit. I saw Lola and Uncle Serge sitting next to each other on the sofa, not speaking. Lola was repeatedly rearranging a stray lock of hair that fell over her eyes.

When she saw me, Klavdia Alexandrovna seemed all at once mad with rage; she had these sudden, inexplicable moments of fury.

“What are you doing here? Go away!” she shouted,
stamping her foot. “Do you always come into someone’s room without knocking?”

I had in fact tapped on the door, but they hadn’t heard me. I tried to say so. Then Lola got up. “Leave her alone, Klavdia,” she said.

She lit the lamp. I saw that she was a bit unsteady on her feet, in the way you are if you’re woken suddenly in the middle of the night. There was a red mark on her neck. I saw it clearly: it looked like the mark of a bite. However, fearing another rebuff, I said nothing and slipped away. Behind me, the door was banged shut and then locked.

After that I don’t remember anything until an evening when we all met as usual in the drawing room. Sofia Andreïevna, Uncle Serge, and some other friends were playing cards; Klavdia was at the piano making Nina and me practice a duet. The door opened and Lola appeared. How pale she was! She crossed the room, stopped by the table of cardplayers, watched them for a few moments without saying anything, then at last spoke to her mother and said, “I’m going to a friend’s house.”

It was nine o’clock in the evening. Her mother made no objection, asking neither who the friend was nor when her daughter would return. I told you that everyone in that house did as they pleased. She replied calmly, “Well, go with God.”

Those simple words—an everyday expression in Russian—had an extraordinary effect on Lola. She kept
twisting and untwisting her hands, looking at us all in despair. Nobody noticed anything. Our duet came to an end. Klavdia played a few bars of “The Happy Farmer,” and then immediately switched to a gentle, sensuous tune, which, as you listened to it, made you want to cry, laugh, then hide in a dark corner and stay there the whole night long without moving. Lola left the room. A little later Uncle Serge threw down his cards. “I have to visit a patient this evening,” he said.

He bowed to Sofia Andreïevna, let his lips linger a long time on the hand she held out to him, and left. Klavdia Alexandrovna stopped playing and disappeared to her room.

Uncle Serge’s departure brought the game to an end. Sofia Andreïevna was soon left on her own and began to play patience. Mademoiselle, in her severe black dress with its little white collar and a gold chain hanging on her thin chest, was sitting very straight in the armchair opposite embroidering a fine linen handkerchief. I could hear Sofia Andreïevna: “… Well, that’s youth, my dear Mademoiselle. You wait, you search, you make a mistake, you weep, you get over it … How can we help them? Parents can only pray to God.”

“God helps those who help themselves,” said Mademoiselle.

That night I slept in Nina’s room. I was woken by footsteps and slamming doors. I opened my eyes, saw that it was barely light, and went back to sleep.

Nina and I had planned to build a hut out of branches
at the end of the garden, first thing in the morning. We left the house very early without seeing anyone, taking our breakfast with us. At lunchtime, as we were coming back, happy and messy, the first person I met was Mademoiselle.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “We’re going home.”

“What, now! Why?”

She didn’t reply, but dragged me off to the hallway. I could see Sofia Andreïevna through the open door, sitting in an armchair, her head thrown back, tears coursing down her pale, ravaged face and an opened letter on her lap. Then I suddenly heard Klavdia Alexandrovna laughing: it was a sharp, false, convulsive sound, which ended in sobs and curses. Sofia Andreïevna sat up.

“Help! Help!” Klavdia exclaimed, distraught.

Mademoiselle, who always had a little flask of English smelling salts on her—I had often amused myself by unscrewing the silver stopper, breathing in the smell, and making myself sneeze—rushed to Klavdia and, delighted by the drama, I followed her.

Klavdia’s arms were flailing about: this wasn’t a pretend collapse. At least, I don’t think so. She seemed to be suffocating. She kept repeating, “It’s my fault, all my fault! May God punish me!”

“What could you do, my dear friend,” said Sofia Andreïevna, stroking her hair. “What even a mother
couldn’t see or guess, how could you be expected to know?”

Still, Klavdia repeated, “It’s my fault, mine alone. I shall die.”

After administering the smelling salts, Mademoiselle was now standing next to her, gazing at her coldly.

“I fear for her,” Sofia Andreïevna said to Mademoiselle.

“If I were you, Madame, I wouldn’t be too worried.”

“Ah, but she’s so devoted, so warmhearted … This tragedy will kill her … as it will me,” said Sofia Andreïevna, in an exhausted voice.

I caught sight of Nina in the hall, making signs at me through the half-open door. I went to join her. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t understand. Apparently Lola has run away with Uncle Serge. Maybe they will get married? I don’t understand why Mother is crying. If it were me, I’d be very happy.”

We discussed it for a moment and concluded that Sofia Andreïevna was angry because it had been done in secret, without consulting her.

Then, as all this really did not concern us, and as we were actually a bit embarrassed by it, we took advantage of the upset to carry out a plan we had been hatching for a long time and endlessly putting off. We crept into the kitchen to put a few changes in place: we swapped the
sugar for salt, put coal in the icebox, and the cat and her kittens into the big casserole dish.

“Cook will lift the lid and the cats will jump out at her, she’ll put fish in the icebox and it will come out all black. She’ll think someone has put a curse on her. She’s always accusing Klavdia of witchcraft.”

That suddenly made me remember the spell with fire, water, and moonlight. I did not say anything then, but later on, in the tram on the way home, I slid closer to Mademoiselle and whispered, “I know why Klavdia Alexandrovna was in such a state.”

“Why?” asked Mademoiselle, no doubt too interested to remember to give her standard reply: “Irène, you pry too much into the grown-ups’ business.”

I told her the story of the magic game by the stream after the storm.

“Is it true, Mademoiselle? Did she know a spell?”

“No, it’s just silliness.”

“So why hadn’t Lola and Uncle Serge thought about each other until that moment?”

“Well, for a start, how do you know they’d never thought about each other before?”

Now it was my turn to surprise her. I shrugged self-importantly. “I’m sure they hadn’t—it’s not as if one can’t tell when people are in love!”

Mademoiselle sighed and said nothing. I carried on, flattered by her attention.

“It was certainly all because of her. And now she’s full
of remorse because witchcraft is forbidden by God. She’s crying because she’s sorry, that’s all.”

Mademoiselle looked down at me with an expression I could not quite work out, but which I did not like: I hate irony when it is directed against me, and anyway, what had I said that was so amusing?

“That must be it,” she said.

Le spectateur

[  THE SPECTATOR  ]

THEY HAD EATEN WELL. THE CREAMINESS OF THE
quenelles brought out the deep, dark flavor of the truffles: not too overpowering, but mingling with the tender flesh of the fish and the delicate white sauce, just as the deep notes of the cello had harmonized with the sound of the piano in the delightful concerto he had heard yesterday. If one used one’s imagination and experience it was possible, thought Hugo Grayer, to extract the maximum pleasure from life, and innocent enjoyment. After the exquisite and complex taste of the quenelles, the Chateaubriand steak with potatoes had an austere simplicity reminiscent of classical design. They had drunk a small amount of wine—Hugo had a delicate liver—but it was a 1924 Château Ausone. What a bit of luck it had been to discover such a rare wine in an apparently simple
restaurant on one of the Parisian quays. With a smile Magda said, in English, “You are a marvel, Hugo dear!”

She took his arm. He was short and very thin, and looked as if he had been created by a particularly refined artist using only a limited palette of colors: gray for his suit, hair, and eyes; a touch of pale ocher for his face and gloves; a few spots of white on his stiff collar and forehead; and a gleam of gold in his mouth. His companion, taller than he, solidly built and rosy-cheeked, was wearing a little hat, fashionably and jauntily perched on top of her silvery curls like a bird on a branch. She walked by his side with long, confident strides that rang out on the old cobblestones.

It was an August day in Paris, on the Quai d’Orléans by the Seine. Hugo kept congratulating himself that this year he had postponed his departure to Deauville: the weather was fine and Magda quite entertaining. He did not like dining with pretty girls; at his age it was better to keep his pleasures separate. For a lunch like this what he needed was a hard-boiled, cynical old American such as Magda, who appreciated her food and had good taste in wine. She admired him, but that left him indifferent: he had always been admired for his taste, his wealth, his splendid collection of porcelain, his knowledge of ancient Greek writers, his generosity, and his intelligence. He did not need other people’s admiration, yet Magda amused him. It was better, and more unusual, to be amused than admired … better and more unusual to be amused than loved.