The Wine of Solitude (7 page)

‘… More normal … They used to fight, but … it wasn’t the same … Everyone fights … whereas now, she’s never there … Where on earth could she be going, I wonder, all night long?’

As she followed her train of thought, she remembered that her mother sometimes talked about the Dnieper at night and how the nightingales sang in the old lime trees along the riverbank …

She started whistling, picking up the fallen branch of a tree that lay on the grass and slowly peeling off the bark.

‘The Dnieper in the moonlight, at night … Love, people in love,’ she murmured. ‘Love.’ She hesitated for a moment and quietly spoke the word her mother sighed when reading French romantic novels: ‘Lover … A lover, that’s what it’s called …’

Yet there was something else she was trying hard to remember and couldn’t, something that made her feel uneasy … But it was time to go home; the first jets of water from the sprinklers sprayed on to the lilacs, and their strong, powerful scent rose into the air. She stood up and walked past the bench, with her head turned in the other direction.

But in spite of herself, as soon as she had reached the end of the path she secretly glanced back at the amorous couple with a vague feeling of repulsion, shame and fascination; their silent kiss was so long and sweet that for a second a feeling of painful tenderness shot through her like an arrow. She shrugged her shoulders and, like an indulgent old woman, thought, ‘Let them get on with it if it makes them happy.’

She climbed over the railings, undeterred by the brambles that covered them and scratched her calves, and took the long way back to the place where Mademoiselle Rose sat finishing some Irish embroidery on a collar.

They went home; Hélène was silent, resting her head against Mademoiselle Rose. In the dusk, you could still clearly see the statue of Nicholas I on his pedestal, his silent face menacing above the drowsy city; but the streets were now nothing more than fragrant shadowy shapes full of whispers, the last sleepy chirping of birds, the pale silhouettes of bats against the moon, the beautiful round, pink moon …

At this time of day the house was empty. ‘She’ was roaming about, Lord knows where. Her grandfather was eating an ice cream on the terrace of the Café François, thinking with nostalgia of Paris and the Café Tortoni. The fragrant ice cream melted in the heat of the early night air.
The French newspapers he was reading flapped merrily on their poles in the light wind. Hélène may not have been thinking about him, but he was thinking about her with kindness and affection. She was the only one in the world he loved. Bella was egotistical, a bad mother. ‘As for her behaviour, well, that’s nothing to do with me any more, thank the Lord. Besides, she’s right: the only good thing in life is love. But the little girl … She’s so intelligent. The child will suffer … she already understands, she can sense it.’ Ah, well. What could he do about it? He hated confrontations, lectures, quarrels …

At his age he deserved to be left in peace. And then there was the money, the money … The money didn’t belong to Bella, but she knew only too well how to make sure he didn’t forget that it was thanks to her and her husband they were able to survive. And she always reminded him of how he’d squandered his fortune. His darling daughter … And yet, she loved him; she was proud of him, of how young he still looked, of his fine clothes, of his perfect French accent. They got along rather well living together, without annoying each other, without spying on each other. Everything will work out eventually. She’ll get older. She’ll be like the other women, keeping herself busy with gossip and card games, and she might even develop some affection for her daughter …

Anything was possible. Nothing was really that important. He ordered one last pistachio ice cream and ate it slowly to savour it, looking up at the stars.

Back at home, Hélène’s grandmother was pacing back and forth between the windows: ‘Hésslène … Hélène isn’t home yet. It rained this morning. But Mademoiselle Rose is
bringing her up like a French child … French,’ she thought with hatred. ‘Exposing the child to risks with open windows and draughts …’

Oh, how she hated Mademoiselle Rose. It was a shy hatred, but a profound one. It filled her heart, yet she hid it even from herself, thinking only, ‘They couldn’t possibly love the child like we do, those governesses, those foreigners …’

Hélène walked in silence; she was thirsty. She thought longingly of the taste of the cold milk that was waiting for her in the old blue bowl that sat on the washstand in her bedroom. How she would throw back her head and drink it, how she would feel the sweet, icy milk flow past her lips and run down her throat … She even imagined the brilliant moon shining behind the windowpane, as if its cool light added even more to the delicious sensation of satisfied thirst.

Then, suddenly, when she was nearly home, she remembered the nightdress she ’d discovered in her mother’s bedroom, the nightdress, torn like the schoolgirl’s black smock … She let out a little ‘ah’ of surprise, experiencing the intense pleasure of intellectual satisfaction at understanding something; she grabbed Mademoiselle Rose’s hand and smiled, staring up at her with an intense, malicious expression in her brown eyes. ‘I understand now,’ she said. ‘She has lovers, doesn’t she?’

‘Be quiet, Hélène, be quiet,’ whispered Mademoiselle Rose.

But Hélène thought to herself, ‘She knew who I meant right away.’

She let out a happy, birdlike little cry, jumped up on to an old stone boundary marker while cooing, ‘A lover … a lover!
She has a lover!’ Then, suddenly weary and seeing the lamp being lit in her room, she remembered how thirsty she was. ‘Oh, Mademoiselle Rose, dearest Mademoiselle Rose,’ she said. ‘Why aren’t I allowed to eat ice cream?’

But Mademoiselle Rose was lost in thought and so said nothing.

Hélène’s life, like everyone else’s, had its own haven of light. Every year she returned to France with her mother and Mademoiselle Rose. How happy she was to see Paris again. She loved it so much. Now that Karol was getting rich, his wife stayed at the Grand Hotel in Paris, but Hélène stayed in a grim, sordid little guest house behind Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Hélène was growing up; it was necessary to keep her as far away as possible from the life her mother enjoyed. Madame Karol paid for Hélène’s and Mademoiselle Rose’s accommodation out of her personal allowance, thus reconciling her own self-interest with the demands of morality. But Hélène was perfectly happy. For a few months she could mingle with French children of her own age.

How she envied them! She never grew tired of studying them. To be born in these ordinary, peaceful neighbourhoods where all the houses looked alike – how wonderful that would be. To be born and grow up here. To have Paris as her home. Not to have to see her mother every morning when they met
at the Bois de Boulogne, walking slowly beside her down the Allée des Acacias (and having fulfilled this duty, Bella Karol believed she had done what was necessary and had no need to think about her daughter until the next day, unless she fell seriously ill), not to see her mother, with her Irish tweed jacket, her polka-dot veil, her skirt sweeping across the dead leaves, as she walked with all the plumed aplomb of, according to the popular expression of the day, a ‘horse pulling a hearse’ to meet an Argentinian with cigar-coloured skin. Not to have to travel by train for five days to return to a barbaric country where she didn’t really feel at home either, because she spoke French better than Russian, because her hair was done in curls rather than tightly pulled back into shiny little plaits, because her dresses were based on Parisian fashion … Even, if necessary, to be the daughter of one of the shopkeepers near the Gare de Lyon. To wear a black smock and have cheeks as pink as radishes. To be able to ask her mother (a different mother), ‘Mama, where are the penny notebooks?’

To be that little girl …

‘Hélène, stand up straight.’

‘Oh, damn!’

To be called Jeanne Fournier or Loulou Massard or Henriette Durand, a name that was easy to understand, easy to remember … But no. She wasn’t like the others. Not completely. It was such a shame! And yet … She had a richer and fuller life than other children. She had experienced so many things. She had seen so many different places. She sometimes felt that two distinct souls inhabited her body. She was only a little girl, yet she already had so many memories that she had no trouble
understanding that word that grown-ups used: ‘experience’. Sometimes, when she thought about this, she was filled with an intoxicating feeling of joy. She would walk around Paris in the pinkish dusk, at six o’clock in the evening, when a flood of light filtered down on to the streets; she would hold Mademoiselle Rose’s hand and look at all the faces as they passed by, imagining for each one of them a name, a past, their different loves and hates. She would think with pride: ‘In Russia, they wouldn’t understand the native language. They wouldn’t understand the thoughts of a merchant or a coachman or a farmer. But
I
know. And, what’s more, I understand
them
too. They may push me. They may kick my ball out of the way. They may think, “What a pain these little girls are.” But I’m craftier than they are. Even though I’m a little girl, I’ve seen more things than they have in all their long, boring lives.’

She was thinking all this when she saw the Christmas displays in the windows of one of the biggest department stores. Once again, she imagined with yearning a Parisian family, a little apartment and a Christmas tree beneath a porcelain light hanging from the ceiling …

She was growing up. Her body was losing the stocky robustness of early childhood; her arms and legs were becoming lanky and thinner; her face was paler; her chin was longer and her eyes deeper; the beautiful pink blush in her cheeks was fading.

She spent the winter before the war in Nice, where she turned twelve. It was here that her father would appear, one day, back from Siberia to collect his family and take them to live with him in St Petersburg.

In Nice that year, Hélène listened for the first time to the gentle, loving sound of the sea, to romantic Italian songs and to the words ‘love’ and ‘lover’ without feeling indifferent scorn. The nights were so warm, smelled so sweet … She had reached the age when little girls suddenly come to life, their hearts pound and they press trembling hands to their flat chests beneath their ruffled blouses and think, ‘In this many years I’ll be fifteen, then sixteen … In this many years I’ll be a woman …’

Boris Karol arrived one March morning. Later on, when she thought of her father, she would always think of his face as it looked that day, amid the smoke and bustle of the train station. He was stronger, with a swarthy complexion and red lips. When he bent down so she could kiss him, and she felt his rough cheek against her mouth, the feeling of love she suddenly felt for him filled her heart with a kind of joy that was so piercing it almost hurt. She walked away from Mademoiselle Rose and took her father’s hand. He smiled down at her. When he laughed, his face lit up with fiery intelligence and a sort of mischievous cheerfulness. She affectionately kissed his beautiful tanned hand with its hard nails, just like hers. At that moment she heard a sad, shrill whistle from a train that was leaving, the leitmotif that, from then on, would always accompany the brief appearances her father made in her life. At the same time a conversation began that went over her head, a conversation that no longer sounded like human speech – for words were replaced by numbers – and one which would never cease to echo around her, above her, from now until death closed her father’s lips.

‘Millions, millions, stocks … shares in the Shell Bank
… shares in De Beers, bought at 25 and sold at 90 …’

A young girl walked slowly by, swaying her hips, a basket full of silvery fish balanced on her head:
‘Sardini! Belli sardini!’
Her shrill voice made the ‘i’ sound as piercing as a seagull’s cry.

‘… I speculated … He speculated …’

The little bells on the carriage they’d hired jingled sweetly; the horse shook his long ears in the bag of straw; the coachman chewed on a flower.

‘… I won … I lost … I won it back … Money, shares … Copper, silver mines, gold mines … phosphates … millions, millions, millions …’

Later on, after Karol had eaten lunch and changed his clothes, Hélène was allowed to go with him when he went out. They walked along the Promenade des Anglais. They said nothing. What could they have talked about? The only things that interested Karol were money, business, material things, and Hélène was an innocent child. She looked at him adoringly.

He smiled at her and pinched her cheek. ‘Tell me, how would you like to go and have dinner in Monte Carlo?’

‘Oh, yes!’ Hélène said sweetly, half closing her eyes; she knew no better way to express her pleasure.

In Monte Carlo, after they’d had dinner, Karol seemed anxious. He tapped on the table for a moment, seemed to hesitate, then he suddenly got up and led her out.

They went into the casino. ‘Wait for me here,’ he said, pointing to the lobby; then he disappeared.

She sat down, being very careful to sit up straight and not to get her coat or gloves dirty. A haggard, tired woman stood in front of the mirror, smearing lipstick over her
mouth; behind her, Hélène could see her own reflection: a small, thin little girl with curls all round her face, wearing her first real fur round her neck, a small ermine stole her father had brought back for her from Siberia. She waited for a long time. The hours passed. Men went inside, others came out. She saw strange faces, old women carrying shopping bags, their hands still trembling from having handled gold. This wasn’t the first casino she’d ever seen; one of her earliest memories was having walked across the gambling rooms in Ostend, where players ignored the pieces of gold that sometimes rolled beneath their feet. But now she understood how to see beyond the superficial world. She looked at the women plastered in make-up and thought, ‘Do they have children? Were they ever young? Are they happy?’

For there comes a time in life when the pity previously reserved only for other children takes on a different form, a time when we study the faces of ‘old people’ and sense that one day we will be just like them. And that is the moment when early childhood comes to an end.