The Wine of Solitude

  Then he would wake up shaking, his heart gripped with disgust and shame, thinking, ‘I don’t love her. I’m playing at love. I’m amusing myself. It will be over for ever whenever I want …’

  Time passed, however, and he could no longer fool himself. ‘My mistress’s daughter,’ he thought with terror and remorse.

  Well, so what? It wasn’t unusual.

  ‘It’s almost inevitable,’ he thought. ‘it … happens all the time. Bella will never forgive us. She’s not a mother, not Bella, she’s wholly and ferociously a woman. Well, then, so she won’t forgive us, I don’t really give a damn. After all, I gave her my best years. Isn’t that enough? I gave up my mother, my family, my youth for her …’

  He had loved her so much, this woman who, even then, wasn’t young or beautiful. But she knew how to give pleasure. He recalled the angry scenes with his mother, his sisters’ tears. They had tried everything (such clumsy attempts!) to tear him away from ‘that woman’. He could still remember the tone of his mother’s voice as she said, ‘She doesn’t love you. She just wanted to get revenge on me, take you away from me. You poor boy. She was nothing, a mere nobody,’ she would say in English, bitterly, finding some consolation in being able to speak that language fluently, unlike Bella who had undoubtedly only learned it from some lover she once had: ‘She’s so smug now, smug because she took my son away from me; that woman I refused to receive, not because she was poor, thank God! I’m above anything like that. But because she behaved like a slut. That viper! She took my son! Do you think she did it for any other reason? Believe me, my boy, women don’t love a man for himself but as a weapon against another woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ Max mused, ‘she was right …’

  He was old enough, however, to realise that love was rarely pure and simple at the beginning. At first, Bella had wanted to take her revenge on Madame Safronov. But later she had loved him as faithfully as a woman like her was capable of loving. What he hadn’t known was that his youth and his excessive passion satisfied in her a sensual need for love that was full of danger, a kind of love that one of her former lovers had kindled in her heart.

  ‘She wanted me to live and breathe only because of her. I’m all alone in the world now, with her …’

  He felt his solitude as pain, a feeling of suffocation that was almost physical. ‘I haven’t a single friend, apart from Hélène. To Bella, relationships, simple human relationships, family ties, friendships, companionship, don’t exist. A friend, a family, a home, I miss all those things and will miss them for ever, as long as I stay with her.’ He sometimes thought of leaving her. But life without the Karols seemed impossible to him. He had no one but them. He felt tied to them as much by his desire for pleasure as by simple human habit. He feared an even more bitter feeling of solitude, one that was irreversible. Sometimes he would go for days on end without answering the telephone or replying to Bella’s messages. But he was too often bored in this foreign country, with no friends, no profession. He had brought a fortune from Russia that was neither great enough to allow him expensive distractions nor small enough to make him feel he needed to work for a living. He wanted to see Hélène again. He went back. He watched her coming and going, running and jumping with an elegant lightness given wings by her extreme youth; it seemed almost impossible to keep her on the ground.

  ‘How young you are, my God,’ he whispered with astonishment, bitterness and envious despair. ‘You’re so young!’

  He took her hand, secretly pressed it against his cheek with a shy, innocent gesture.

  One June day the Karols were having lunch at Max’s house. They were all about to leave for Biarritz. Max lived in a modest, quiet little apartment in a peaceful street in Passy; it was almost like living in the countryside. A storm was brewing over Paris; the sky was covered in copper-coloured wisps of cloud that slowly moved closer together to form a blanket of pink mist that parted every so often to reveal a dazzling ray of light.

  When lunch was over, Max went out to buy a small suitcase he needed. Hélène picked up a book.

  Karol stared nostalgically at some invisible point in the distance. His fingers were never still; he snapped them loudly and rhythmically, like castanets. Hélène realised that he was imagining the gaming table at the club. He finally stood up and sighed. ‘I didn’t have time to shave. I’ll be back in half an hour …’

  ‘But Boris,’ his wife cried, ‘we’re leaving as soon as Max gets back! Come on, you know if you go out you won’t come back until tonight.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Boris Karol and his face lit up with that mischievous smile Hélène loved so much. ‘Here, my darling,’ he said, slipping some money into his wife’s hand, ‘you have just enough time to buy yourself that new hat you wanted.’

  She softened.

  ‘Let’s go downstairs together.’

  Hélène was alone. A gentle breeze rustled the branches of a nearby tree; the stormy sun appeared, lighting up the leaves that strained in the wind. The clouds got darker, blocking out the light, the tree swayed and creaked as the wind ripped off the young June leaves, still so green and delicate.

  The key turned in the lock and Max came in. He wasn’t surprised to find the house empty. He knew what the Karols were like. He waited. At around four o’clock Karol, whom no one had expected to see before evening, arrived at the house. He slammed the door angrily.

  ‘My wife isn’t back yet? I told her to wait for me in the car. When I came out she was gone. That’s so like her. She made me give my word that I wouldn’t stay at the club for more than half an hour and, just when my luck was beginning to change, she disappears.’

  ‘But my poor friend,’ said Max, his voice weary, ‘it’s after four o’clock. She must have waited for you for two and a half hours. You have to admit that …’

  Karol wasn’t listening; he was shaking with impatience, watching the door; his eyes shone, but with a sad, passionate, gloomy look. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘what a shame. Just when my luck was starting to change …’

  He paced up and down the room.

  ‘I’m going back to the club,’ he said at last, forcing himself to laugh. ‘I’ll be back in a flash.’

  ‘It’s going to rain, Papa,’ cried Hélène, ‘and you don’t have a raincoat. Wait a moment, take an umbrella, you were coughing so much yesterday …’

  ‘Don’t make a fuss,’ he shouted happily as he disappeared. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘Where’s the other one now?’ said Max, shaking with annoyance. ‘It’s nearly five o’clock.’

  Hélène started to laugh. ‘My dear Max. Haven’t you learned by now? We’ll leave this evening, or in the middle of the night, or tomorrow, or next week. What’s the difference? Will it be any better or different from being here?’

  He didn’t reply. They were alone. The clock ticked. Far off in the distance thunder rumbled in the skies with the deep, soft sound of a bird cooing.

  The telephone rang. Max answered it.

  ‘Hello, yes, it’s me …’

  Hélène recognised her mother’s voice.

  ‘He came back and then went out again,’ Max said. ‘No,’ he continued, hesitating, ‘she’s not here either. I’m going out. I can see the trip is off. Let’s go tomorrow.’

  He hung up and stood there, gloomy and silent.

  Hélène looked at him and smiled. ‘Telling lies, my little Max?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he replied. ‘Let’s just have a moment’s peace for once.’

  The first heavy, large drops of rain pattered against the windows. It was dark outside now. Hélène shuddered. ‘It’s so cold all of a sudden, for June. It must be hailing …’

  ‘Let’s close the shutters,’ he said.

  With the shutters and curtains closed, and a small lamp switched on in the darkness, the little room felt peaceful and friendly.

  ‘Come on, let’s have something to eat.’

  They put some water on to boil. Hélène set the tabl
e. She walked over to a pink vase that had carnations in it. ‘Max, you haven’t even taken off the metal bands from the florist, you bad boy. The rust will kill your flowers.’

  She cut off some of the stems, changed the water, maliciously enjoying the look of pleasure that spread across Max’s face.

  ‘I need a woman here,’ he said innocently.

  Rainwater flowed down the empty street. In the next room the blinds were open and they could see shining, light sprays of water swirling over the pavement in the wind.

  Max closed the door. There wasn’t a single sound now. He sat down at her feet. ‘Wait, don’t move, let me help you, let me serve you. Would you like some tea? There’s a cake left from breakfast. You can have it. Please have it.’

  Humble and attentive, he watched her as she ate, his amorous eyes fixed on her white teeth that shone between her lips. The profound stillness held them in a kind of sweet, silent spell.

  ‘I find you so attractive,’ he said finally, so quietly that he had to say it again before she could understand his words. He was trembling.

  ‘At last,’ she mused, mocking herself as much as him. ‘Here it is. The moment I’ve waited for so long.’

  How had she managed it? She remembered the hills in Finland, when the slightest push sent the sleigh flying off into space. She had set everything in motion the first time she’d smiled at him on the boat, when she’d spoken to him without letting him see how much she hated him, and after that moment her persistent presence had affected him so quickly, so imperceptibly, that he’d felt the kind of intangible enchantment that grows between a man and a woman who are constantly together even though they aren’t related.

  Gently, she stroked his face; she felt a friendly, vague sense of pity for him; she was so strong, so serene, so sure of her power; but then she frowned and pulled her hand away. Wishing to see him tremble and look up at her with an expression of fear and submission, she said, ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Hélène,’ he said quickly, his voice hoarse, ‘I love you, I want to marry you. I love you, my darling Hélène …’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  She had cried out in surprise and with a kind of hatred and bitterness that shocked him. ‘Never,’ she whispered, ‘never, never, never …’

  ‘Why not?’ he said, anger flashing in his eyes, which brought back the Max she had so detested, the enemy of her childhood; she shrugged her shoulders, wanting to say ‘Because I don’t love you’. But she immediately thought, ‘Ah, no. If I tell him that he’ll never forgive me, it will be finished, the game will be over. Marry him? I’d never do anything as stupid as that. My desire for revenge isn’t strong enough to risk my own happiness. I don’t love him …’

  She just shook her head in silence.

  He thought he understood and went deathly pale. He grabbed her and held her in his arms. ‘Hélène, forgive me, forgive me, how could I know? I love you, you’re still so young, you’ll love me some day. It isn’t possible that you won’t love me,’ he said, as she allowed him to kiss her cheek and lips in passionate despair.

  Outside, the loud noise of the rain was subsiding; they could hear the faint musical sound of the dripping wet leaves more clearly. Max held her tightly against him, and she could feel his mouth trembling as he gently kissed and bit her shoulder through the flimsy fabric of her dress.

  Gently she pushed him away. ‘No, no …’

  He wanted to kiss her on the lips but she stretched out her hands and thrust away his eager, affectionate face.

  ‘Let go of me! I can hear footsteps; it’s my mother,’ she cried, terrified.

  He let her go; she fell back on to the settee, pale and drained. But it was only the driver who had come up to find out what he should do. While Max was talking to him, she slipped out of the room and ran away.

  5

  They didn’t leave for Biarritz that night; Hélène went home. She got into her narrow bed; her room was the only one on the ground floor of the house they lived in and her bed was pushed up against the window. Noise from the city beat against her shutters while, above her head, she heard her mother walking endlessly from one room to another in an attempt to overcome her insomnia and stop herself from crying; outside, she could hear cars coming back from the countryside; couples who had stayed out late strolled down the street or kissed on benches. Hélène lit the lamp; she looked at the décor of her life with hostility: the bright red and sea-green Directoire mouldings, the pink curtains, the tall, narrow mirrors set into the walls. She loved nothing in this world.

  ‘Nothing and no one,’ she thought sadly. ‘I should have been so happy tonight. I got everything I desired. If only I wanted to …’

  She shook her head and laughed.

  ‘Oh Hélène,’ she said, talking to herself as she had done since she was a child, ‘you know very well that you’re the strongest one and they’re nothing but pitifully easy prey. Was it really so difficult to make Max fall in love with you? I’m eighteen and she’s forty-five. Any young girl could have done it. And here you are, bursting with pride. What you should have done was conquer yourself. What right do you have to look at them with scorn if you’re no stronger, no better than they are?’ She raised her slim, tanned arm and looked at the veins visible beneath the skin. ‘I’ve spent my whole life fighting against my hideous bloodline,’ she thought, ‘but it’s here within me. It’s flowing through me, and if I don’t learn how to conquer myself, this bitter, cursed blood will win out.’

  She recalled the mirror in the dark room at Max’s apartment and how her face looked when she let him kiss her. It was a terrifying, sensual, triumphant face, and for an instant it reminded her of the way her mother had looked when she was young.

  ‘I won’t let this demon get the better of me,’ she said out loud, laughing. ‘Surely it’s easy to give up the game, now that I virtually have what I set out to get. I’m not a hypocrite, I don’t make myself out to be better than I am; I’m not good, I don’t want to be good. Being good has something soft, weak, suffocating about it. But I do want to be stronger than I am, to conquer myself. Yes, to leave them in their mire, with their shame, while I … My God,’ she murmured with sudden, heart-rending remorse, ‘I’m so flawed, so bitter, so egotistical, so proud of myself. I have no humility, no charity in my heart, but I want so very much to be better. I swear that from this day forward he’ll never see me alone. I’ll avoid him. I’ll avoid him with as much determination as I did before when trying to arrange to be alone with him. It will be boring.’ She smiled. ‘Well, too bad! It’s what I want. Demon of pride or demon of vengeance, we’ll see which is the stronger! But will I have the courage to see her happy? Yes, why not? From this moment on I’ll no longer hate her. I’ve forgiven her …’

  She threw off her blanket and stretched out straight, with her arms under her head.

  ‘Yes, it’s odd, but for the first time in my life I can think of her without my heart quivering or feeling as heavy as stone. I even feel a little sorry for her …’

  She pictured her mother’s pale face, the marks her tears left on her make-up, her ravaged features.

  ‘Me, her little Hélène … What did she call me? “An awkward, wild little girl. You’re so clumsy, my poor Hélène.” ’

  Her eyes flashed in the darkness.

  ‘Not as clumsy as all that,’ she whispered, clenching her teeth, but she forced herself to slow the intense, rapid beating of her heart. ‘Being a hungry wolf isn’t all that hard but it’s not worthy of me. I’ll tell Max that I don’t love him, that it was all just a game. He’ll go back to her, even if it’s only to try to make me suffer. Tomorrow, everything will go back to normal, so to speak. Since Father either doesn’t see anything or doesn’t want to see anything, all I have to do is let things carry on as they were. And besides, my intense, evil pleasure was poisoned by bitterness. What a strange night.’ She switched off the lamp and watched silvery rays of light peek through the shutters. ‘What beautiful moonlight
…’

  She got out of bed and walked barefoot over to the window; she opened the shutters and looked out at the wide, empty avenue. The wind was blowing in from the Bois. The night was crystal clear now, a transparent blue. She sat down by the window, humming softly. Never had her heart felt so light; a kind of joyous passion flowed through her blood. ‘To know that I’m the one who holds her happiness in my hands and can manipulate it as I wish … Isn’t that the best revenge? What more could I want? I don’t love him. If I did love him …’

  She stared straight ahead, picturing in her mind his eager, submissive face. ‘I don’t love anyone, thank God, I’m alone and free. If I could,’ she suddenly thought, ‘I’d go away right now, tonight. To tell the truth, that’s all I really want. To go away to some corner of the earth where I’ll never see my mother or this house ever again, where I’ll never hear the word “money”, or the word “love”. But there’s my father … Although, he doesn’t need me,’ she thought bitterly. ‘No one needs me. Max is in love, but that’s not what I need, I want a peaceful, secure kind of tenderness. But do I really? I’m not a child any more. I’m at the age where most people reject that kind of tenderness … Yes, but I’ve never had it, I’ve missed it so much … And not having had a childhood when I should have means that it’s probably impossible to mature like other people; I’m shrivelled on one side and green on the other, like fruit that’s been exposed to the cold and the wind.’