The Wine of Solitude

  ‘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!’

  PART IV

  1

  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.’

  She saw Max coming towards her; she recognised his walk and the glow of the little pipe he was smoking. ‘Is that you?’ he asked wearily.

  He went over to her, leaned against the railings next to her and watched the sea in silence; one of the ship’s lanterns lit up his face. How he had changed! He was one of those men who, when they are young, seem to have finer features and look more handsome than they actually are; he wasn’t even thirty, but already his clean-shaven face, drawn at the corners of his mouth, was thicker, heavier; it had begun to crumple, turn ugly; he no longer had his beautiful silky eyelashes or the scornful crease at the corner of his handsome mouth; it was paler now, leaving him looking weary and irritated; you could see the gold fillings in his teeth.

  He whistled softly to the dog. ‘Up, Svea, you’re in my spot. Move over a bit, Hélène.’

  He came and sat down beside her, holding the bulldog on his lap.

  ‘Those lights to the right,’ said Hélène softly, ‘that must be Le Havre. How bright it looks. I think I can make out the coastline near Honfleur. Yes, it’s France, France!’

  ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ he asked, sighing.

  ‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? I love France, and those lights are a good omen.’

  ‘Presumptuous youth,’ he scoffed. ‘The lights, the music, the shouting … You don’t see them as being in honour of an event as insignificant as the signing of a peace treaty. In your eyes they’re for you. How silly young girls can be.’

  ‘Now, now,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘You’d be quite happy to be in my shoes. Look at you. Fed up, irritable … and why? I’m content, I feel light-hearted, happy. And it’s because I’m seventeen, darling, and that’s a joyful time of life.’

  She slowly raised her bare arm to her lips and licked the smooth, suntanned skin to taste the salt left there by ten days at sea.

  Max looked at her with curiosity. ‘Shall I tell you something?’ he asked after thinking for a moment. ‘I hope you won’t be offended. You haven’t grown up in the way you’d like me to think, you’ve simply got younger. At fifteen you were a little old lady. Now, at last, you’re the age you should be.’

  ‘Well, well,’ she whispered, ‘so you’ve noticed that?’

  He nodded. ‘I notice everything, understand everything, and when I don’t understand, it’s because I don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said, while she was actually thinking, ‘So, the game is on. We’ll soon see who wins …’

  She was trembling with a cunning, cruel excitement, but at the same time she felt truly sad. ‘I’m no better than them, in the end …’

  She remembered an unhappy little girl whose heart was filled with love; she affectionately contemplated that image, deep within her, and spoke to it: ‘Patience, you’ll see …’

  The ship sailed on between the two illuminated coastlines; between France and England, fanfare answered fanfare as fireworks mirrored fireworks; and in the reddish sea mist the boat slowly drifted towards the brightly shining ports decorated with flags and banners.

  Hélène clenched her trembling hands together in a childlike gesture, just as she had in the past. ‘I used to come here when I was a child. It was the only place in the world that I was happy,’ she said softly, expecting him to respond with the dry little scornful laugh she knew so well.

  But at first he didn’t reply at all and, when he did speak, his voice was different: gentle and hesitant. ‘I know you didn’t have a happy childhood. You see, Hélène, sometimes people are bad without realising it. You can’t always make your life turn out the way you want it to be. You’re at an age when …’

  He fell silent.

  ‘I w
onder if you would understand the real meaning of the word passion?’

  He smoked for a moment in silence, looking up at the stars. ‘They’re barely shining … The lights from the ground are masking them … What was I saying? Yes, passion … Take your father, for example. He’s passionate about gambling and it’s an invincible, horrible obsession. You belong to a race of passionate people, my poor Hélène, who abandon themselves to their obsessions completely, ignoring any sense of duty or morality. That’s just how they are. You won’t change them. I’m not like them. It’s just that there are certain ties that can’t be undone, ties that keep you tightly bound, that strangle you. I know I can behave badly, but at least I feel regret, I can’t forget everything else in the world. I don’t understand that obsession, that cruelty. I thought I did understand …’

  He turned away and slowly placed his hand over his eyes, feeling ashamed and almost certainly wiping away a tear. ‘I don’t know what’s come over me,’ he said at last. ‘Since my mother died, Hélène, I feel so depressed. Oh, it’s so sad, you have no idea. I loved my mother so much … To other people she seemed harsh and cold. But when it came to me, she loved me so much. Whenever I walked over to her I could see her face change, light up, not with a smile, but with a kind of inner light, a light that shone only for me.’

  At first she listened to him with astonishment. To her, the love of a child for a mother was not a feeling easy to understand. But then she started to think he was wallowing in his sorrow, feeding it with all the anger he felt towards Bella and her tyrannical, all-consuming love.

  Meanwhile, he was remembering something his mother had said to him one day when they were quarrelling a very long time ago. It made him feel uneasy: ‘And one fine day you’ll marry Hélène. That’s what always happens in the end.’ He had laughed at the time. Now he smiled, for when someone is dead, certain insignificant words they’ve said take on a new, prophetic, threatening meaning. He pushed the memory from his thoughts.

  ‘If you like,’ Hélène said softly, ‘we could be … good friends …’

  He sighed. ‘I’d like that very much. I hardly have any friends. I have no friends at all.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You know, we could have been friends a long time ago, if you’d wanted to. But you were horrible …’

  ‘Now, now,’ she said, laughing, ‘don’t push it. We’ve also signed a peace treaty tonight, you and I …’ She jumped down. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Asleep. She can’t stand it when the ship rocks.’

  ‘Ah,’ he murmured, his thoughts elsewhere. ‘Goodnight …’

  Oddly enough, the cargo boat was transporting a shipment of theatre sets from Norkøping to Le Havre. The sea was so choppy that they couldn’t anchor in Le Havre, so the ship followed the estuary of the Seine to Rouen. In the morning the countryside was full of fruit trees. Hélène stood dead still, rooted to the spot with surprise, looking at the peaceful landscape. Apple trees … It seemed as extraordinary to her as seeing palm trees, or bread and cheese hanging from the branches. Then Rouen appeared and, that very evening, they were in Paris.

  In Paris, Karol was waiting for them. He was thinner; his clothing hung off his hunched shoulders in great folds; beneath the thin, dry skin on his face the outline of his bones appeared so distinctly that you could follow the line of his strong jaw; his eyes had blackish-brown circles round them; every one of his gestures was nervous and hesitant; he seemed consumed from within by some inner fire.

  He briefly kissed his daughter, slapped Max on the back, then turned round and affectionately took Bella’s arm and held her close. ‘Ah, my darling, my darling wife …’

  Then, immediately, a flood of incomprehensible words and numbers washed over Hélène’s head.

  Paris was sad, deserted, lit up only by the odd street lamp and the bright stars. Hélène recognised each of the streets.

  They crossed the Place Vendôme; it was dark and empty.

  Bella pouted and said, ‘So this is Paris? My God, how it’s changed!’

  ‘We’re making money everywhere we turn,’ whispered Karol. ‘We rolling in it.’

  2

  That autumn, Karol left for New York, leaving his wife a new car whose wheels and headlights sparkled with gold.

  Sometimes the chambermaid would wake Hélène early in the morning with news that they were leaving in an hour. Where were they going? No one knew. The morning would pass. The car would wait. The servants would carry down Bella’s cases, hatboxes and toiletries. Then the chambermaid would cross the entrance hall carrying the jewellery box and make-up case, sit down in the back of the car and wait. Max and Bella were quarrelling. Hélène could hear them from her room, first cold and calm, then gradually becoming more and more passionate and full of hate.

  ‘Never again, I swear it!’

  ‘Stop making a scene …’

  ‘A scene! You poison the existence of everyone around you …’

  ‘In the past …’

  ‘In the past, I was mad. When a madman recovers his sanity, should he remain locked up in his cell for ever?’

  ‘Well, then, get out, who’s stopping you?’

  ‘If you say that one more time …’

  ‘Why not? Go on, that’s right, get out, you miserable, ungrateful thing. No, no, Max, my darling, forgive me, forgive me. Don’t look at me like that …’

  By now it was nearly twelve o’clock. They had to have lunch. They ate in deadly silence. Bella, her eyes swollen from crying, stared out into the street. Max, his hands shaking, leafed through a Michelin guide whose pages tore when he touched them. The chambermaid had gone back upstairs to her room with the jewellery box and make-up case. The car sat waiting. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. A series of servants took the suitcases back upstairs.

  Hélène went and knocked on her mother’s door. ‘Are we going somewhere today, Mama?’

  ‘I don’t know. Leave me alone. In any case, where could we go? It’s late. Hélène, where are you, Hélène? Yes, we’re leaving, right away, in an hour. But just go away. Leave me in peace, for the love of God! All of you, just leave me alone! You all wish I were dead!’

  She was crying. The car still waited. Bella had the servant unpack her cosmetics and plastered make-up on again to repair her face.

  ‘Do you know where we’re going, Mademoiselle?’ the driver asked.

  Hélène didn’t know. She waited. When her mother and Max finally came downstairs, pale and still shaking with fury, it was late. A delicate mist rose from the damp streets towards the clear red sky. They set off, randomly choosing one of the roads that led out of Paris. No one spoke. Bella’s eyes filled with tears; she didn’t wipe them away because she didn’t want to ruin her make-up, just dabbed at them nervously, recalling with pity and tenderness the woman she used to be. Who in the world, apart from Karol perhaps, remembered that young woman walking along the streets of Paris one autumn evening, dressed in the latest 1905 fashion, a large straw hat perched on top of her black chignon, its short veil forming a tulle frame round her face? She was young, then, rather awkward with too much perfume and inexpensive make-up inexpertly applied, but her skin was so white and smooth. Everything seemed wonderful to her. Why did she get married? Why do people realise the existence that might have been theirs so late in life? Why did she resist that Argentinean she’d known as a young woman? He would have ended up leaving her, but there would have been others to replace him. She wasn’t a hypocrite. ‘What do men want from me?’ she thought. ‘I can’t change my body or put out the fire that burns in my blood. Was I made to be a good wife and mother? Max fell in love with me because I was nothing like those gloomy middle-class women he met, and now he won’t forgive me for having remained who I am. Is that my fault?’

  She remembered the Paris of her past, the day she had first arrived there fifteen years before: the fine rain with its smell of musk that fell slowly against a background of light. Every house w
as lit up in the darkness. A man followed her. He’d wanted her to go with him. Oh, how passionately she had wished never again to return to Russia, never again to see her husband and daughter, just to go away with him, not because she loved him, but because he symbolised a free and happy life. Happy? And why not? But she was still young then and hadn’t dared. She’d been afraid of having an affair and being poor. She had still carried pictures of Boris and Hélène in a little silk bag sewn into her blouse, along with her passport and return ticket. Stupid, cowardly youth. Unique, irreplaceable youth! She felt as if Max had stolen it from her. Because of him, she had carelessly let time slip by, without thinking of holding on to those precious moments, without savouring each and every drop of happiness. And now, he didn’t love her any more …

  She turned towards him and looked at him through her tears. They had left Paris. They were driving through the countryside. Night had fallen. The scent of fresh grass rose from the meadows mingled with the smell of milk from the farms. They went past sleepy villages and, in the headlights of the car, they saw a white façade, a flashing traffic marker and, at the entrance to a church, white angels carved in stone, smiling mysteriously, their wings folded. A pale yellow dog or cat came out of the shadows, its flashing eyes reflecting the car’s headlights, then an old woman appeared in a white dressing gown standing near the open shutters. The driver, who could barely keep his eyes open, grumbled, and the brakes screeched as he nervously applied them, but they kept going, like madmen, towards Normandy or Provence, while Bella said over and over again, ‘We should have gone somewhere else. I don’t like this road, I don’t like this car. I’m bored with it all, everything is frustrating, sad, horrible.’

  And her eyes fell upon the cold, motionless face beside her with love, despair and anguish.