Come on, Hélène!’

Every year, during the same period, soon after the pilgrims arrived, epidemics raged through the city. The children suffered most. The year before, the Grossmanns’ eldest daughter had died.

Hélène obeyed and ran on ahead, but for a long time she heard the echo of the chants carried by the wind as they faded away into the distance towards the Dnieper.

In the park the military band of brass instruments and drums played at full blast while university students circled slowly round the fountain one way, and the secondary school students linked arms and circled in the opposite direction. High above the crowd, sunbeams struck the statue of Emperor Nicholas I, sending out brilliant rays of light.

All the students smiled as they passed each other, whispering and exchanging flowers, love letters, promises. The flirting, the game-playing went right over Hélène’s head; not that she was ignorant of them, but she wasn’t yet curious about ‘that’, as she scornfully called it to herself.

‘How stupid they look the way they wink and giggle and shriek!’

Games, races with the other children, she was happy doing those things. Was there any pleasure equal to running, her hair whipping her face, her cheeks burning like two flames, her heart pounding? The breathlessness, the wild spinning of the park around her, the shouts she let out almost without noticing, what pleasures could compete with those?

Faster, ever faster … They bumped into the legs of passers-by, slipped near the edge of the fountain, fell on to the soft, cool grass …

It was forbidden to go down the dark paths where couples kissed on benches in the shadows. Yet Hélène and the boys she played with always ended up there, racing on ahead; their indifferent childlike eyes saw, without really seeing, pale faces glued to one another, held in place by two soft, quivering mouths.

One day – it was the summer she turned ten – Hélène jumped over the railings on to one of these paths – tearing the lace of her dress as she did so – and hid in the grass; on a bench opposite her two young lovers were embracing; the fairground music that filled the gardens faded away as night fell; there was only a distant, delightful murmur: the sound of water flowing from the fountain, of birds singing and muffled voices. The sun’s rays could not penetrate the vault created by the oaks and lime trees; lying on her back and looking up, Hélène watched the early evening light as it shimmered at the tops of the trees; it was six o’clock. Sweat ran down her burning face and was dried by the wind, leaving her skin feeling soft and cool; she closed her eyes. The boys could look for her … She was bored by them … Golden, translucent insects flew down, perching on the tall grass; she enjoyed blowing gently on their motionless wings: they would slowly unfold, then let the wind lift them upwards to disappear into the blue sky. She imagined she was helping them fly. She loved to roll around in the grass, to feel it beneath her warm little palms, to rub her cheek against the fragrant earth. Through the railings, she could see the wide, empty street. A dog sat on the stony ground licking its wounds, groaning and howling loudly; church bells rang softly, lazily; some time later a lone group of weary pilgrims passed by; they were no longer singing but walked silently through the dust in their bare feet while the ribbons from the icon they were holding out in front of them barely billowed in the calm air.

On the bench sat a young girl; she was wearing the uniform of the town’s secondary school: brown dress, black smock, hair pulled back in a little round bun beneath a straw hat; Posnansky, the son of a Polish lawyer, was kissing her in silence.

‘She’s a fool,’ mused Hélène. She looked mockingly at the pink cheeks that turned fiery scarlet beneath the girl’s coil of black hair.

Like a conqueror, the boy threw off his grey schoolboy’s cap, decorated with the Imperial eagle. ‘You have really silly ideas, Tonia, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said in his uneven, hoarse young boy’s voice that was starting to change; it still had some of the soft, feminine intonation of a child.

‘If you like,’ he said, ‘we could go to the edge of the Dnieper tonight, in the moonlight. If you only knew how nice it is. You light a big fire on the grass and lie down. It’s as comfortable as a bed and you can hear the nightingales singing …’

‘Oh, do be quiet!’ murmured the young girl, blushing as she weakly pushed away the hands that were unbuttoning her blouse. ‘Absolutely not. If my family found out … and I’m afraid; I don’t want you to look down on me. You boys are all the same …’

‘Chérie!’ said the boy, pulling her face towards his.

‘Poor little fool,’ thought Hélène. ‘What kind of pleasure or enjoyment could she possibly get out of rubbing her cheek against those hard metal buttons, or feeling the rough material of his uniform against her chest, or his mouth, dripping wet no doubt, against hers … ugh … Is that what they call love?’

The boy’s impatient hand pulled the shoulder strap of the schoolgirl’s smock so hard that the material gave way; Hélène saw two little breasts emerge; they were barely formed, tender and white, grasped by the eager fingers of her sweetheart. ‘How horrible!’ she whispered.

She quickly looked away, buried herself deep in the gently billowing grass, for the wind had risen as night fell; the breeze held the scent of the nearby river and the rushes and reeds that lined it. For a moment she imagined the slow-moving river beneath the moon, the fires lit along its banks. The year she’d had whooping cough, the doctor had recommended a change of air, so her father had taken her on boat rides, sometimes at dusk after he got home from the office. They would stop for the night in one of the white monasteries dotted across the little islands. That was so long ago … Her thoughts drifted to how different her house had seemed back then, more like everyone else’s, more ‘normal’ … She tried to find another word to describe it, but in vain.

‘… More normal … They used to fight, but … it wasn’t the same … Everyone fights … whereas now, she’s never there … Where on earth could she be going, I wonder, all night long?’

As she followed her train of thought, she remembered that her mother sometimes talked about the Dnieper at night and how the nightingales sang in the old lime trees along the riverbank …

She started whistling, picking up the fallen branch of a tree that lay on the grass and slowly peeling off the bark.

‘The Dnieper in the moonlight, at night … Love, people in love,’ she murmured. ‘Love.’ She hesitated for a moment and quietly spoke the word her mother sighed when reading French romantic novels: ‘Lover … A lover, that’s what it’s called …’

Yet there was something else she was trying hard to remember and couldn’t, something that made her feel uneasy … But it was time to go home; the first jets of water from the sprinklers sprayed on to the lilacs, and their strong, powerful scent rose into the air. She stood up and walked past the bench, with her head turned in the other direction.

But in spite of herself, as soon as she had reached the end of the path she secretly glanced back at the amorous couple with a vague feeling of repulsion, shame and fascination; their silent kiss was so long and sweet that for a second a feeling of painful tenderness shot through her like an arrow.