His loving caresses were only for her too.

She pushed away his hand. ‘Don’t, Boris,’ she said, sullen and irritable. ‘It’s hot, leave me be …’

She pulled the lamp towards her, leaving the others in darkness; she sighed with boredom and weariness, curling strands of her hair round her fingers. She was a tall, shapely woman ‘of regal bearing’ and with a tendency to plumpness, which she fought by using corsets shaped liked breastplates, as was the fashion; her breasts nestled in two satin pockets, like fruit in a basket. Her arms were white and powdered. Hélène felt a strange sensation, close to revulsion, when she saw her mother’s snow-white skin, pale, languid hands and claw-like nails. Hélène’s grandfather completed the family circle.

The moon spilled its tranquil light over the tops of the lime trees; nightingales sang beyond the hills. The Dnieper shimmered a dazzling white. The moonlight shone on the nape of Madame Karol’s neck, which was as pale and hard as marble; it reflected off Boris Karol’s silvery hair and the short, tapered beard of the elderly Safronov; it cast a dim light on the small, wrinkled, angular features of her grandmother: she was only fifty but she looked so old, so weary … The silence of this sleepy provincial town, lost deep within Russia, was intense, heavy and overwhelmingly sad. Then, suddenly, the stillness was broken by the sound of a carriage jolting along the paved street: the terrible din of a lashing whip, swearing the bump of wheels against stone, which faded and disappeared into the distance … Nothing more … silence … just the rustling of birds’ wings in the trees … the sound of a distant song from some country road, interrupted by the noise of arguments, shouting, the thud of a policeman’s boots, the screams of a drunken woman being dragged to the police station by the hair … Silence once more …

Hélène gently pinched her arms so she wouldn’t fall asleep; her cheeks burned as if they were on fire. Her dark curls kept her neck warm; she ran her fingers through her hair, lifting it up; she thought angrily that it was only her long hair that kept her from beating the boys when they raced: they grabbed it while she was running; she smiled with pride recalling how she had kept her balance on the slippery edge of the fountain. Her arms and legs were racked with agonising but exhilarating exhaustion; she secretly rubbed her painful knees, covered in scratches and bruises; her passionate blood pulsed quietly, deep within her body; she kicked the underside of the table impatiently, hammering its wood and sometimes her grandmother’s legs, who said nothing so Hélène wouldn’t be scolded.

‘Put your hands on the table,’ Madame Karol said sharply.

Then she continued reading her fashion magazine.

‘Tea-gown in lemon-yellow twilled silk with eighteen orange velvet bows to fasten the bodice …’ she said with a sigh, forming each word with longing.

She wound a curl of her shiny dark hair round her fingers and stroked it against her cheek as if in a dream. She was bored: she didn’t like meeting up with other women to smoke and play cards, as they all did as soon as they were over thirty. Looking after the house and her child filled her with horror. She was only happy in a hotel, in a room with a bed and a trunk, in Paris …

‘Ah, Paris!’ she thought, closing her eyes. ‘To eat at the bar of the Chauffeurs’ Café, to sleep in a train compartment, even if necessary on the hard benches in third class, but to be alone and free!’ Here, from every window, the women looked her up and down, glaring at her Parisian dresses, her make-up, the man she was with. Here, every married woman had a lover, whom the children called ‘Uncle’ and who played cards with their husbands. ‘Why bother having a lover at all, then?’ she thought, remembering the men who followed her around in Paris, men she didn’t know … That, at least, was exciting, dangerous, thrilling … To hold a man tightly in her arms when she didn’t even know his name or where he came from, a man she would never see again, that and that alone gave her the sharp thrill of pleasure she desired.

‘Ah,’ she thought, ‘I wasn’t destined to be a placid middle-class woman, satisfied with her husband and child.’

They had finished their meal; Karol pushed away his plate and set out the roulette wheel purchased the previous year in Nice. Everyone gathered round him: he threw the ivory ball almost angrily, but every now and again, when the sound of the accordion echoed more loudly from the courtyard, he would raise his long finger in the air and, without interrupting his game of roulette, he would hum the tune they played with extreme accuracy, then softly whistle it through his half-open lips.

‘Do you remember Nice, Hélène?’ said Madame Karol.

Hélène did remember Nice.

‘And Paris? You haven’t forgotten Paris, have you?’

Hélène felt her heart melt with tenderness at the memory of Paris, the Tuileries Gardens … (Trees the colour of tarnished steel beneath the tender winter sky, the sweet smell of the rain, and in the heavy, misty dusk, the yellowish moon that rose slowly above the column in the Place Vendôme …)

Karol had forgotten everyone else around him. He drummed his fingers nervously on the table and watched the little ivory ball wildly spin and sway. ‘Black, red, the 2, the 8 … Ah! I would have won … Forty-four times what I’d bet. And with just one gold louis.’

But it was over almost too quickly. There wasn’t time to enjoy the uncertainty or the danger, the despair in defeat or the exhilaration of victory. Baccarat, now there was an idea … But he was still too poor for that, too unimportant. One day, perhaps …

‘Ah, dear God,’ the elderly Madame Safronov murmured. ‘Ah, dear God!’ It was an habitual refrain. She had a slight limp in one leg, but walked quickly: her features were faded, washed out by her tears, like a very old photograph; her yellowish wrinkled neck sat above the frilled little collar of her white blouse. She continually brought her hand to rest against her flat chest, as if every word she said would make her heart pound; she was always sad, complaining, anxious: everything was an excuse for her to sigh, to lament. ‘Life is bad,’ she would say. ‘God is terrible.