It had the same golden torchère, the same black piano and velvet stool: all the newly married couples ordered these things while on honeymoon in Paris. But to Hélène everything seemed brighter and prettier than at home. In the middle of the room a woman was stretched out on a sofa upholstered in flowered fabric.

It was Madame Grossmann. Hélène knew her, but she had never seen her like this before, in a light-pink dressing gown with a tangle of children hanging from her arms. Her husband, a bald young man with a fat cigar in his mouth, was standing beside the sofa, leaning towards his wife; he looked bored to death and his eyes wandered a little impatiently from his family in front of him to the door, through which he would clearly have liked to escape. But Hélène wasn’t looking at him; she was eagerly studying the young woman with her three children whose impatient little hands tugged at her dishevelled black hair; the youngest child, nestled in his mother’s arm, gently nipped at her exposed cheek and neck like a little puppy.

‘She isn’t wearing any make-up,’ Hélène thought bitterly.

The two older children sat at their mother’s feet; the eldest girl was pale and sickly, her dark curls coiled round her ears, but the second-eldest had great pink cheeks that looked as if you could eat them; you could imagine them melting in your mouth when you kissed her, like ripe fruit.

‘I don’t have such beautiful cheeks,’ thought Hélène. ‘No, I don’t.’ Then she noticed Grossmann’s face, his tense, controlled smile, his eyes fixed on the door. ‘He’s bored,’ she mused with malicious satisfaction; sometimes, thanks to some mysterious power in her soul, she seemed able to sense the thoughts and feelings of others.

‘Hélène, hello,’ Madame Grossmann said sweetly.

She was a thin, unattractive woman, but with the liveliness and grace of a bird; there had been a slight note of pity in her voice.

Hélène lowered her head; her heavy fur-lined coat was making her feel unbearably hot; she paid little attention to the conversation going on above her head.

‘I’ve brought a pattern for a collar for Nathalie …’

‘Oh, Mademoiselle Rose, you are so very kind. Hélène can take off her coat and play with my girls for a bit, can’t you, Hélène?’

‘Oh, no! Thank you, Madame, but it’s late …’

‘Very well. Another time, then.’

The pink lamp cast such a soft, warm light … Hélène looked at the gossamer dressing gown, decorated with chiffon flounces; the three girls pressed against it, cocooned themselves into its fold, without being afraid of crumpling it. Their mother stroked the three dark heads, one after the other, as she spoke.

‘They’re all ugly,’ Hélène thought in despair. ‘They’re all stupid. Clinging on to their mother’s skirts as if they were babies, how shameful! And that Nathalie who’s a head taller than me …’

Hélène looked at the children and they looked back in silence. Nathalie, who seemed to understand Hélène’s discomfort and enjoy it, played hide and seek with her fat, malicious face, covering it with the folds of her mother’s dressing gown and then, when she was sure her mother couldn’t see her, coming out again to puff up her cheeks, stick out her tongue, squint and pull horrible faces, until Madame Grossmann looked towards her, when she suddenly put on the expression of a sweet, smiling, chubby-cheeked little angel.

‘Monsieur Karol has gone away’, Hélène heard someone say, ‘for two years, I believe?’

‘Working in the gold mines,’ said Mademoiselle Rose.

‘In Siberia, how awful …’

‘He’s not complaining; I think he likes the climate.’

‘But two years away! The poor little girl …’

Mademoiselle Rose held Hélène’s face close to her and stroked it. The child pulled away angrily. For the first time in her life she was ashamed of being abandoned: she didn’t want these people to see her governess consoling her.

They left. Hélène now walked on ahead and every time Mademoiselle Rose took her hand, she slowly pulled away, not harshly, but with the sly determination of a dog who wishes to pull free from a lead that is annoying him. At the street corners a biting wind lashed her face, causing tears to well up in her eyes; she furtively wiped her nose and eyes with the end of her fur glove where little flakes of ice were beginning to form.

‘Cover your mouth with your muff. Stand up straight, Hélène …’

She didn’t take much notice; she stood up straight for a moment, then immediately dropped her head again. For the first time she thought seriously about her life and her family, but with a passionate attempt to find some sort of stability and happiness in her own existence; it was not in her nature to give in to pointless despair.

‘I’m happy too when I’m in my room with the lamp on. We’ll soon be home. I’ll sit down at my little yellow desk …’ She pictured with fondness the little desk of painted wood, which was just the right size for her, then the oil lamp with its green porcelain shade, shedding a milky light over her book. ‘No, I won’t read. All those books make me anxious and unhappy. I have to be happy; I have to be like other people. Tonight I’ll have my glass of milk, my bread and jam, the last piece of chocolate before brushing my teeth. When no one is watching I’ll hide the Mémorial under my pillow. No, no. Tonight, I’ll cut out pictures, I’ll draw … I’m happy; I want to be a happy little girl,’ she thought. And the thick ice and sinister shadows beneath a nearby porch, the dark windows with melting snow flowing down them like tears, became a blur before her eyes, merging to form a black, restless sea.

5

When Hélène first began to understand life, Sunday became a day she anticipated with a feeling of sad anguish: Mademoiselle Rose spent every Sunday with some French friends, leaving Hélène hostage to the crushing affection of her elderly grandmother.