The Wine of Solitude (6 page)

‘I don’t know, Madame.’

‘She speaks French so well!’ said Madame Manassé.

She continued to gently stroke Hélène’s curls; her hands were pale and fat, and the curls straightened as they ran
through her fingers. Every now and again she would raise her hands, gently shaking them to force the blood back down her long veins so her skin could retain its paleness. She pushed back Hélène’s hair to reveal her ears, noted with a sigh of regret that they were small and well formed, then carefully arranged the curls over her forehead.

‘Don’t you find her French wonderful? She has no accent at all. Mademoiselle Rose is from Paris and it shows. She has good taste and nimble fingers. Your mama is lucky to have her. So you didn’t know that your father was going to live in St Petersburg? And you as well, of course. Hasn’t your mother told you anything?’

‘No, Madame. Not yet …’

‘She’ll be happy to see your father after so many years. Ah, how she must be looking forward to that. If I had to be apart from my darling husband … well, I can’t even imagine it,’ said Madame Manassé with feeling. ‘But not everyone has the same nature, thank goodness. It’s been two years, hasn’t it? Two years since your father left?’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Two years … You still remember him, I hope?’

‘Oh, yes, Madame.’

Did she remember her father? ‘Of course,’ thought Hélène; her heart ached when she thought of him, recalling exactly how he looked when he used to come into her room each evening … ‘Yet this is the first time I’ve thought about him since he left,’ mused Hélène, her heart full of affection and remorse.

‘Mama isn’t too bored, is she?’ asked Madame Manassé.

Hélène coldly studied the faces all around her, each one tense with eager curiosity. The young woman’s nostrils
trembled, releasing blue rings into the air. The men looked at each other and sniggered, saying ‘hm’ while tapping their dry, gnarled fingers on the table; they sighed, shrugged their shoulders and glanced at Hélène with irony and pity in their eyes.

‘No, she’s not bored …’

‘Ah hah!’ said one of the men, laughing. ‘Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. I knew your mother when she was barely older than you, Mademoiselle.’

‘Did you also know Safronov senior when he was at the height of his success?’ asked Madame Manassé. ‘When I came to live here he was already old.’

‘Yes, I did know him. He squandered three fortunes: his mother’s, his wife’s and his daughter’s, who had some money left to her by his wife’s father. Three fortunes …’

‘Quite apart from his own, I imagine.’

‘He never had a penny, which didn’t stop him from living the high life, I can assure you. As for Bella, she was just a schoolgirl when I first met her …’

Hélène thought of the photograph of her mother when she was a child: she ’d been a chubby girl with a round face and hair worn up, with a comb to hold it in place. But she dismissed this image at once: to think that the mother she so feared and hated had once been a little girl like any other, that even
she
had the right to reproach her parents, would allow too many subtleties to seep into the cruel picture of her mother that Hélène had long ago secretly etched into her heart.

‘Hélène has beautiful eyes,’ murmured Madame Manassé.

‘She looks like her father; there’s no doubt about it!’ someone said disappointedly.

‘Oh, my dear …’

‘What! These things happen. But I know a particular person who has always been lucky …’

‘Ivan Ivanitch, you terrible gossip, stop it right now!’ said Madame Manassé. She laughed and glanced sideways towards Hélène as if to say, ‘The child will understand … It’s not her fault …’

‘How old are you, Hélène?’

‘Ten, Madame.’

‘She’s a big girl now. Her mother will soon start thinking about finding a husband.’

‘She won’t have any trouble doing that. Did you know that the way things are going, Karol will soon be a millionaire?’

‘Now, let’s not exaggerate!’ said Madame Manassé; she suddenly found it difficult to speak, as if the words burned her mouth as she spoke them. ‘He has earned a lot of money, or so they say. Some people think he’s discovered a new mine, which, by the way, strikes me as the most likely, but others say he’s improved the output of the old one. It’s possible. I have no idea. There are so many ways to make a fortune for a man who’s … clever … But whatever the case may be, money earned quickly gets spent quickly, my dears. Rushing all over the world is not always the best way to get rich. Although Lord knows I wish him all the prosperity in the world, the poor man …’

‘You know what they say: “Luck of the …” ’

‘Come now, do be quiet. You’re as bad as some gossipy old woman. Don’t judge and you won’t be judged,’ said Madame Manassé. She pulled Hélène to her bosom and kissed her.

Hélène was repulsed; she felt as if she were drowning between those warm, heavy, quivering breasts. ‘May I go and play now, Madame?’

‘Of course you can. Run off and play, my darling Hélène; have a really wonderful time while you’re here, my poor dear. Look at how nicely she does her curtsey. She’s such a charming little girl …’

Hélène ran back out into the garden where the boys greeted her with shouts of joy, wild gestures and by pulling faces, just as children do when they are overexcited and tired at the end of the weekend.

‘Forward march!’ she said swiftly. ‘To the right! Battle formation!’

The autumn snow sprinkled a shiny, dry, white powder over them in the early night. Carrying a stick over her shoulder, her long cape billowing behind her, Hélène led the weary, shivering, panting boys around the bushes and through the woods, delighting in the feel of the wind and the damp, bitter smell of the air.

But her heart felt heavy in her chest, weighed down by an inexplicable pain.

In summer, when it started getting hot, Hélène would go out to play in the public gardens. The air was thick with dust and smelled of dung and roses. As soon as they crossed the avenue the noise of the city faded away; here the street was bordered with gardens and old, sprawling lime trees; the houses were barely visible at the end of the pathways; every now and again you could just make out through the branches the pink walls of a little church or a golden clock tower. There were never any cars and few passers-by. The leaves that had fallen to the ground muffled the sound of footsteps. Hélène ran on ahead, happy, impatient, always circling back to Mademoiselle Rose in the thousand ways children and dogs do when out for a walk. She felt free, joyful and strong. She wore a white broderie anglaise dress with three layers, a silk belt, and two large, delicate wide bows, securely fixed by two pins to the outer skirt of starched taffeta, a straw hat with lace trim, a white bow in her hair, patent leather shoes and black silk socks. In spite of this, she managed to run and jump and climb on to every bench, crushing and
scattering the green leaves, while Mademoiselle Rose said, ‘You’re going to tear your dress, Lili …’

But she wasn’t listening. She was ten years old; she felt the harsh, intense joy of being alive with a kind of intoxicating satisfaction.

Opposite the public gardens was a short, steep street, and where old women sold strawberries and miniature roses; they were hunched over and barefoot in the dust, their hair covered by white kerchiefs to protect them from the sun; hard, green little apples sat in buckets full of water.

Processions of pilgrims often passed along the road, on their way to the famous Dnieper monasteries. Their arrival was heralded by a horrible stench of filth and open wounds; singing hymns at the top of their voices, they marched past, followed by a cloud of yellow dust. The pale, translucent flowers from the lime trees fell on to their bare heads and clung to their bushy beards. The obese prelates, with their long, straight, dark hair, held up heavy gold icons that shot beams of fire when struck by the bright sun. The dust, the military music coming from the park, the shouts of the pilgrims, the sunflower seeds swirling in the air, all created the atmosphere of a wild, drunken party that entranced Hélène, making her head spin so she felt mildly queasy.

‘Come on, now, quickly!’ said Mademoiselle Rose, taking the child by the hand and pulling her along. ‘They’re dirty … they’re bringing all sorts of diseases with them. Come on, Hélène!’

Every year, during the same period, soon after the pilgrims arrived, epidemics raged through the city. The children suffered most. The year before, the Grossmanns’ eldest daughter had died.

Hélène obeyed and ran on ahead, but for a long time she heard the echo of the chants carried by the wind as they faded away into the distance towards the Dnieper.

In the park the military band of brass instruments and drums played at full blast while university students circled slowly round the fountain one way, and the secondary school students linked arms and circled in the opposite direction. High above the crowd, sunbeams struck the statue of Emperor Nicholas I, sending out brilliant rays of light.

All the students smiled as they passed each other, whispering and exchanging flowers, love letters, promises. The flirting, the game-playing went right over Hélène’s head; not that she was ignorant of them, but she wasn’t yet curious about ‘that’, as she scornfully called it to herself.

‘How stupid they look the way they wink and giggle and shriek!’

Games, races with the other children, she was happy doing those things. Was there any pleasure equal to running, her hair whipping her face, her cheeks burning like two flames, her heart pounding? The breathlessness, the wild spinning of the park around her, the shouts she let out almost without noticing, what pleasures could compete with those?

Faster, ever faster … They bumped into the legs of passers-by, slipped near the edge of the fountain, fell on to the soft, cool grass …

It was forbidden to go down the dark paths where couples kissed on benches in the shadows. Yet Hélène and the boys she played with always ended up there, racing on ahead; their indifferent childlike eyes saw, without really seeing, pale faces glued to one another, held in place by two soft, quivering mouths.

One day – it was the summer she turned ten – Hélène jumped over the railings on to one of these paths – tearing the lace of her dress as she did so – and hid in the grass; on a bench opposite her two young lovers were embracing; the fairground music that filled the gardens faded away as night fell; there was only a distant, delightful murmur: the sound of water flowing from the fountain, of birds singing and muffled voices. The sun’s rays could not penetrate the vault created by the oaks and lime trees; lying on her back and looking up, Hélène watched the early evening light as it shimmered at the tops of the trees; it was six o’clock. Sweat ran down her burning face and was dried by the wind, leaving her skin feeling soft and cool; she closed her eyes. The boys could look for her … She was bored by them … Golden, translucent insects flew down, perching on the tall grass; she enjoyed blowing gently on their motionless wings: they would slowly unfold, then let the wind lift them upwards to disappear into the blue sky. She imagined she was helping them fly. She loved to roll around in the grass, to feel it beneath her warm little palms, to rub her cheek against the fragrant earth. Through the railings, she could see the wide, empty street. A dog sat on the stony ground licking its wounds, groaning and howling loudly; church bells rang softly, lazily; some time later a lone group of weary pilgrims passed by; they were no longer singing but walked silently through the dust in their bare feet while the ribbons from the icon they were holding out in front of them barely billowed in the calm air.

On the bench sat a young girl; she was wearing the uniform of the town’s secondary school: brown dress, black smock, hair pulled back in a little round bun beneath a straw hat;
Posnansky, the son of a Polish lawyer, was kissing her in silence.

‘She’s a fool,’ mused Hélène. She looked mockingly at the pink cheeks that turned fiery scarlet beneath the girl’s coil of black hair.

Like a conqueror, the boy threw off his grey schoolboy’s cap, decorated with the Imperial eagle. ‘You have really silly ideas, Tonia, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said in his uneven, hoarse young boy’s voice that was starting to change; it still had some of the soft, feminine intonation of a child.

‘If you like,’ he said, ‘we could go to the edge of the Dnieper tonight, in the moonlight. If you only knew how nice it is. You light a big fire on the grass and lie down. It’s as comfortable as a bed and you can hear the nightingales singing …’

‘Oh, do be quiet!’ murmured the young girl, blushing as she weakly pushed away the hands that were unbuttoning her blouse. ‘Absolutely not. If my family found out … and I’m afraid; I don’t want you to look down on me. You boys are all the same …’

‘
Chérie
!’ said the boy, pulling her face towards his.

‘Poor little fool,’ thought Hélène. ‘What kind of pleasure or enjoyment could she possibly get out of rubbing her cheek against those hard metal buttons, or feeling the rough material of his uniform against her chest, or his mouth, dripping wet no doubt, against hers … ugh … Is that what they call love?’

The boy’s impatient hand pulled the shoulder strap of the schoolgirl’s smock so hard that the material gave way; Hélène saw two little breasts emerge; they were barely formed, tender
and white, grasped by the eager fingers of her sweetheart. ‘How horrible!’ she whispered.

She quickly looked away, buried herself deep in the gently billowing grass, for the wind had risen as night fell; the breeze held the scent of the nearby river and the rushes and reeds that lined it. For a moment she imagined the slow-moving river beneath the moon, the fires lit along its banks. The year she’d had whooping cough, the doctor had recommended a change of air, so her father had taken her on boat rides, sometimes at dusk after he got home from the office. They would stop for the night in one of the white monasteries dotted across the little islands. That was so long ago … Her thoughts drifted to how different her house had seemed back then, more like everyone else’s, more ‘normal’ … She tried to find another word to describe it, but in vain.