‘Learn your lessons here then.’
‘All right, Papa.’
He slipped a small sugar cube dipped in cognac into her mouth. ‘This is for you, Hélène.’ Then immediately forgot about her again.
They talked about Shanghai, Tehran, Constantinople. They had to leave. But where should they go? Danger was everywhere, but since everyone was in the same boat it seemed less urgent; it would pass. Hélène wasn’t listening; she was completely indifferent to the name of some distant corner of the world where she would end up. She had got down from his lap and was sitting in the red armchair now, learning her lesson for the next day. It was from a book on ‘German Conversation’ and she had to memorise ‘die zwanzigste Lektion’, the description of a close-knit family. Hélène repeated the words quietly: ‘Eine glückliche Familie (a happy family). Der Vater (the father) ist ein frommer Mann (is a pious man) …
‘Good Lord!’ she thought. ‘What imbeciles …’
She looked at the illustration that accompanied the text.
The ‘happy family’ all sat together in a blue sitting room; the father, who had a blond curly beard that came down to his chest, wore a frock coat and slippers, and was reading the newspapers beside the fireplace; the mother, the Hausfrau, was dusting the bookcase shelves, wearing a long apron tied at the waist; the young girl was playing the piano while the schoolboy learned his lessons by the light of a lamp; two young children, a yellow dog and a grey cat sat on the rug in the middle of the room, all ‘playing’, according to the text, ‘the innocent games appropriate to their age’.
‘What a fantasy!’ thought Hélène.
She looked at the people around her. They didn’t even see she was there, but to her as well they were unreal, distant, half-hidden in a mist: vain, insubstantial ghosts lacking flesh and blood; she lived on the sidelines, far away from them, in an imaginary world where she was mistress and queen. She picked up the small pencil that she always kept in her pocket, hesitated, then gradually, very gradually, pulled the book close to her, as if it were a loaded weapon.
She started to write:
The father is thinking about a woman he met in the street, and the mother has only just said goodbye to her lover. They do not understand their children, and their children do not love them; the young girl is thinking about the boy she’s in love with, and the boy about the naughty words he has learned at school. The little children will grow up and be just like them. Books lie. There is no virtue, no love in the world. Every household is the same. In every family there is nothing but greed, lies and mutual misunderstanding.
She stopped, twiddled the pencil round in her hand and a cruel, shy smile spread across her face. It made her feel better to write these things down. No one paid any attention to her or cared about her. She could amuse herself in any way she pleased; she continued writing, barely pressing down on the pencil, but with a strange rapidity and dexterity she had never experienced before, an agility of thought that made her aware of what she was writing and what was taking shape in her mind simultaneously, so they suddenly coincided. She experimented with this new game, as if she were watching tears flow down her face on to her hands on a winter’s evening and seeing how the frost transformed them into icy flowers.
It’s the same everywhere. In our house as well, it’s the same. The husband, the wife and …
She hesitated, then wrote: ‘The lover …’
She rubbed out the last word, then wrote it in again, enthralled as it appeared before her eyes, then disguised it once more by adding little arrows and curlicues to each letter until the word disappeared and looked like a small insect with a mass of antennae, or a plant with many thorns. It had an evil air about it, strange, secretive and crude, that pleased her.
‘What are you writing, Hélène?’
She gave an involuntary start, and they all stared at her with surprise and suspicion as her face slowly turned white, looking old before its time and suddenly exhausted.
‘Now, then … What are you writing? Give it to me,’ Bella commanded.
Hélène clenched her hands together and silently began twisting and tearing up the paper.
Bella pounced. ‘I said give it to me!’
Desperately, Hélène tried to crumple the paper between her trembling fingers but it was too thick; the coloured illustration on the glossy paper creased but wouldn’t tear; terrified, she breathed in the smell of glue and heavy coloured ink that she would never forget …
‘You’re mad! You will give that to me at once! Be careful, Hélène!’ shouted Bella in a rage and, grabbing her daughter’s shoulder, she dug her nails into her with such fury that Hélène could feel their sharp tips pierce her flesh through her dress. But she clung on to the book, without shedding a tear, teeth clenched, until suddenly she dropped it and it fell to the floor.
Bella made a dive for the page Hélène had torn out, read the few sentences written in pencil, and looked in astonishment at the illustration. Blood rushed straight to her pale face, visible despite her thick make-up. ‘She’s gone mad,’ she exclaimed. ‘You miserable thing, you ungrateful little hussy. You’re a horrible liar! You’re nothing but a fool, do you hear me? Nothing but a wretched idiot. When someone thinks, dares to think such things, things that are so impertinent, so stupid, they at least shouldn’t write them down. They keep them to themselves. How dare you judge your parents. And we’re such good parents. We sacrifice everything for you, for your sake. We worry ourselves sick over your health, your happiness. How ungrateful of you! Do you even understand what it is like to be a parent? You should cherish us! You should think there is nothing dearer to you in the world!’
‘To top it all off,’ Hélène thought bitterly, ‘they want to be loved.’
Her mother’s face was convulsed with fury; she leaned in towards Hélène, her hated eyes burning, dilated with anger and fear. ‘Is there anything you don’t have, you ungrateful thing? Look at you! You have books, dresses, jewellery. What about this?’ she shouted, tearing the little blue enamel locket from its chain and sending it rolling on to the floor; she crushed it with her heel, stamped on it in a rage.
‘Look at her, look at that face! Not a word of regret! Not a single tear! Just you wait. I know how to bring you to heel. All this is your governess’s fault. She’s turning you against your parents. She’s teaching you to hate us. Well, she can just pack her bags, do you hear me? You can say goodbye to your Mademoiselle Rose. You’ll never see her again! Ah, so that makes you cry, does it? Look at her, Boris! Look at your wonderful daughter. Not a tear for me, for her mother, or for you. But as soon as it concerns Mademoiselle Rose she’s all contrite. Ah, so you deign to speak now. And what have you got to say for yourself, let’s hear it!’
‘It wasn’t her, Mama! Mama, it’s all my fault!’
‘Shut up!’
‘Forgive me, Mama,’ cried Hélène; she sensed that only her humbleness was a precious enough offering to appease the wrath of the gods.
‘They can do whatever they want to me,’ she thought in despair. ‘She can beat me, she can kill me, but not that.’
‘Mama, please forgive me, it will never happen again,’ she cried, finding the words she found hardest to say because of her pride, the words of a chastised child. ‘I’m begging you to forgive me.’
But when she saw Hélène’s resistance collapse, Bella allowed herself to fly into a rage. Or perhaps she thought her tears and shouting would stun her husband, divert his attention from Max?
She ran to the door, opened it and shouted, ‘Mademoiselle! Come here at once!’
Mademoiselle Rose ran in; she was shaking. She hadn’t heard anything; she looked at Hélène in terror and asked what was wrong.
‘What’s wrong?’ cried Bella. ‘What’s wrong is that this child … this child is an ungrateful liar. And you’re the one who has brought the creature up. I congratulate you. But I’ve had enough, enough of this. I’ve put up with everything, but this is the final straw. You will l
eave, do you hear me! I’ll show you that I am the mistress in this house!’
Mademoiselle Rose listened to her without saying a word. She didn’t even turn white: it was impossible for her pallid face to get any paler. She still appeared to be listening even after Bella had stopped talking. The furious words seemed to awaken an echo that only she could hear. ‘Very well, Madam,’ she said quietly, sounding weary.
Max, who hadn’t said a word until then, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, let them be, Bella. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’
‘Get out!’ Bella shouted at her daughter, and she slapped her silent, motionless face, her nails leaving red marks. Hélène let out a yelp, but she refused to cry; she turned towards her father. He was still holding the book covered in writing. He said nothing. He was standing up, and what broke Hélène’s heart, filled it with remorse, was the movement backwards he made, crushing himself against the wall, as if he wanted to disappear, to fade away into the darkness.
Hélène walked over to him and quietly whispered, ‘Papa, do you want me to tell you what the word was, the word you couldn’t see?’
He pushed her away angrily and spoke as quietly as she had: ‘No.’
Then, softly, his mouth clenched shut like hers (by which she understood that he didn’t want to know anything, that he preferred to continue loving this woman and this caricature of a home, preferred to keep the only illusion he had left on this earth), he said, ‘Go away! You’re a very bad girl.’
5
As she did every evening, Mademoiselle Rose stood at Hélène’s bedside and picked up the candle. As she did every evening, she said calmly, ‘Go to sleep quickly now and try not to think about anything.’
She gently stroked Hélène’s forehead with her warm hand, as she’d done for the past eleven years, using the same instinctive gesture; then she sighed and got into her own bed.
Hélène’s heart was breaking. For a long time she looked in despair at Mademoiselle Rose’s calm face in the candlelight; yet she wasn’t asleep. Like Hélène, she was undoubtedly listening to the clock chime the hours; she was breathing in the smell of smoke that filtered into the room from under the door; in the next room Hélène’s parents were talking quietly. From her bed, the little girl could hear an occasional outburst.
‘It isn’t true, Boris, I swear to you, it isn’t true.’
She was such a good liar …
‘You can see how ungrateful children are,’ Hélène heard her continue. ‘She cares more about a foreigner, a scheming woman, than she does about us. It’s that Frenchwoman who’s driving her away from us.’
Then she could only make out some vague whispering, the sound of crying, the weary voice of her father. ‘Calm down now, Bella, my darling …’
‘I swear to you that he’s just a child, a child who loves me. Is that my fault? You know me, come on … I like being attractive, it’s true, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a child. You can understand that it sometimes amuses me to tease him, but you’d have to have the dirty mind of a young girl or an old woman to think … I love you, Boris. You do believe me, don’t you?’
Hélène heard Karol sigh deeply. ‘Of course I do, of course …’
‘Then kiss me, don’t look at me like that.’
The sound of kisses. The candle went out.
‘She’ll die,’ Hélène thought in despair. ‘She can’t live without me. She’s alone, all alone. How can they not understand what they’re doing? How can they not see that they’re killing a human being? Oh, I hate them,’ she said, meaning her mother and Max. ‘How I hate them …’ She wrung her weak, trembling hands. ‘I’d like to kill them,’ she murmured.
Outside, a group of anarchist terrorists in an old Ford decorated with a skeleton’s head drove past her room, making the little white bookcase and the silly statuettes that decorated it shake. They fired a machine gun into the empty streets. But no one was listening to them. Behind closed windows exhausted men, reluctantly resigned to everything, were sleeping.
All next day Bella refused to say a word in Hélène’s presence. Karol wasn’t at home. An innate sense of propriety prevented Hélène from saying a word about Mademoiselle Rose. Another day passed. Mademoiselle Rose was packing her trunks. Yet life carried on so normally, just as in certain delirious dreams when terror merges with familiar details. Hélène learned her lessons; she sat opposite her mother for meals; the electricity had been cut off for weeks; the dim flame of a candle flickered at the back of the enormous dark room. Between noon and two o’clock Hélène and Mademoiselle Rose went out. It was rare for shots to be fired at that time of day, so the streets were quiet.
They could see a lamp that had accidentally been left on at the back of an abandoned house whose windows were nailed shut with planks of wood. The fog filled Hélène’s mouth and slipped down into her throat; it tasted heavy and sickly. That day, as they walked along, Hélène suddenly took hold of Mademoiselle Rose’s hand, shyly squeezed it and held on to her slim fingers in their black wool gloves.
‘Mademoiselle Rose …’
Mademoiselle Rose shuddered, but said nothing and let go of Hélène’s hand, as if that physical contact had interrupted some faraway sound, a sound that she, and she alone, could hear. Hélène sighed and fell silent. The air was ashen and grew thicker with every passing moment. At times, the street was so dark that Mademoiselle Rose became a shadowy figure lost in the mist; Hélène stretched out her hand in anguish and felt for her coat; then they continued walking, in silence. Every now and again a street lamp, lit as if by some miracle, cast its cloudy light over them, and in the opaque air, beneath a flickering mist, she could see Mademoiselle Rose’s thin face, her pursed little mouth, her black velvet hat. In the darkness they could smell the rancid odour of the canals; no one had bothered to clean them since the February Revolution; no one bothered to repair their stones; the city was crumbling beneath the weight of the water, slowly disintegrating, becoming a city of smoke, illusions and fog, retreating into a void.
‘I’m tired,’ said Hélène. ‘I want to go home.’
Mademoiselle Rose said nothing. Yet even though she let out no sound, it seemed as if her lips had moved. In any case the fog muffled everyone’s voices.
They continued walking.
‘It must be late,’ thought Hélène.
She was hungry.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
No reply. She wanted to look at her wristwatch but it was too dark. They passed by the large clock at the Winter Palace; Hélène slowed down to try to hear it ringing, but Mademoiselle Rose kept on walking; Hélène had to run to catch up with her. She later remembered that the clock was broken and no longer chimed.
The fog had suddenly become so thick that she was finding it difficult to keep up with Mademoiselle Rose. But the street was very narrow; she soon caught hold of the familiar woollen coat. ‘Wait for me, won’t you; you’re walking so fast … I’m tired; I want to go home.’
She waited for a reply, in vain.
‘I want to go home,’ she said again, sounding frightened and upset.
Then, suddenly, she stopped, frozen, as Mademoiselle Rose started talking to herself, quietly, sensibly. ‘It’s late, but the house is quite close by. Why haven’t they lit the lamps? Mama never forgets to put a lamp on the window ledge when it starts getting dark. That’s where we sit, my sisters and I, to sew and read. Did you know that Marcel is back?’ she said, turning to Hélène. ‘He’ll find you’ve grown so much. Do you remember the day that he carried you on his back to climb the tower of Notre-Dame? You laughed and laughed … You don’t laugh very often any more, you poor little thing. Listen, I knew I shouldn’t get attached to you, I was warned about it. By whom? I forget. You should never get attached to other people’s children. I could have had a child of my own. He’d be your age now, I wanted to throw myself into the Seine. It was love, you see … but no, I’m old … You do understand that I have to go home, Hélène
. I’m very tired … My sisters are waiting for me. I’ll see my little Marcel …’
She gave a mocking laugh that turned into a painful sigh. Then she said a few disjointed words, but she sounded calmer, more matter-of-fact. She had taken Hélène’s hand again and squeezed it tightly. Hélène followed her; all of this seemed so strange to her that she had the feeling of being in a deep trance. They crossed one of the bridges over the Neva decorated by leaping horses; their bronze backs were covered in fine, light snow. Hélène’s hand brushed against the statue’s pedestal as she walked by and the snow fell down on her, covering her coat; once again she heard the mad little laugh that ended in a sigh. The fog descended suddenly once more.
Mademoiselle Rose hurried on. ‘Keep up,’ she kept saying impatiently, ‘walk faster …’
The street was empty. A lone sailor emerged from the shadows at the corner of a grand building; he had a gold snuffbox in his hand that he pushed under Hélène’s nose; she could clearly see the dark stains of blackish blood he had neglected to wipe off, so they remained on the gold cover; the man seemed to have only half a body, to be floating in the fog that hid his legs and the top of his head; then a cloud of smoke rose between him and Hélène and he disappeared into the night.
‘Stop!’ Hélène cried in despair. ‘Let go of me. I want to go home!’
Mademoiselle Rose shuddered and lessened her grip. Hélène could hear her give a quiet sigh. When she next spoke her delirium seemed to have passed. ‘Don’t be afraid, Lili,’ she said softly. ‘We’re going home now. I haven’t been able to remember things for quite a while now. There was a light over there, at the end of the street that reminded me of the house. You wouldn’t understand … But now, alas, I remember that was all in the past. I wonder if it’s the sound of gunfire that’s doing this to me. You can hear it all night long outside our windows. You’re asleep, but at my age the nights are long.’
She fell silent, then said anxiously, ‘Can’t you hear the cries?’