Free The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky

like a suitcase forgotten at the left luggage office,’ she thought, trying to make fun of herself.
    Obviously this was all so comical, so very comical … She looked around her. There were no other children: they were all asleep in bed. A caring hand had closed the windows andcurtains. They couldn’t hear the mumblings of the old man accosting the shop girls; they couldn’t see the couples kissing on park benches.
    ‘Mademoiselle Rose wouldn’t have forgotten all about me, not Mademoiselle Rose. It’s obvious that I’m still deluding myself,’ she thought bitterly. ‘She’s the only one in the world who loves me …’
    Eleven o’clock. In the moonlight the city looked pale, weary, strange, as in a dream … Hélène walked and walked, her eyes half closed with exhaustion, counting the lights in the houses along the harbour to prevent herself from falling asleep. Really, now! She mustn’t whine. Was she going to start crying like some child left behind in a park? Now the last few horrid-looking women were coming out of the Casino, clutching their bags to their bosoms, their make-up melting down their faces. And behind them? Her father: his white hair, his features lit up with the inner flame of joy and passion she so admired.
    He took her hand and squeezed it hard. ‘My poor darling, come along. I’d forgotten about you. Let’s go home right away.’
    She didn’t dare tell him she was hungry. She didn’t want to see him shrug his shoulders and say with a sigh, as her mother would have done, ‘Children … they’re such a burden!’
    ‘Did you at least win, Papa?’
    Her father’s lips trembled with a little smile that was both joyful and sad. ‘Win? Yes, a little. But do people gamble in order to win?’
    ‘Oh? Well, why else, then?’
    ‘Just for the pleasure of playing, my girl,’ said her fatherand the passionate blood that coursed through his veins seemed to flow hotly into Hélène’s hand; he looked at her with affectionate scorn. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re too young. And you’ll never understand. You’re just a woman.’

PART II

1
    One evening in the autumn of 1914, Hélène, Mademoiselle Rose and the last of their luggage arrived in St Petersburg, where Hélène’s parents had already been living for several weeks.
    As always, whenever Hélène had to see her mother again after a long absence, she trembled with apprehension, but she would have rather died than show it.
    It was a particularly dismal, damp day in that sad season when there is hardly any sun, when you wake up, get up, eat and work by lamplight, and when soft, damp snow falls from a yellowish sky and is whipped away by a furious wind. How harshly it blew, that day, the biting north wind, and what a sickly odour of filthy water rose from the Neva.
    The lights were lit along the streets. A thick fog wafted through the air like smoke. Hélène hated this strange city before she even arrived; now that she saw it, her heart ached as if something terrible was about to happen; she grasped Mademoiselle Rose’s coat nervously, trying to find the familiar warmth of her hand, then turned round and studiedher reflection in the carriage window with sad surprise: it was tense and pale.
    ‘What’s the matter, Lili?’ asked Mademoiselle Rose.
    ‘Nothing. I’m cold. This city is horrible,’ Hélène murmured in despair. ‘And in Paris, the trees are all golden now.’
    ‘But we couldn’t have gone to Paris anyway, my poor little Hélène, because of the war,’ Mademoiselle Rose said sadly.
    They fell silent; heavy drops of rain fell swiftly down the windows, like tears down someone’s face.
    ‘
She
didn’t even come to meet us at the station,’ Hélène said bitterly; she felt a wave of sadness and venom rise up through her soul, emerging from immeasurable depths, from a part of her being that was alien to her.
    ‘You mustn’t call her “she” like that,’ Mademoiselle Rose corrected her. ‘You should