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 father and 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 studied her 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 say “Mama”. “Mama didn’t come to meet us” …’

‘Mama didn’t come to meet us. She probably doesn’t want to see me that much,’ said Hélène quietly. ‘And I don’t want to see her either.’

‘Well, then, what are you complaining about?’ Mademoiselle Rose replied softly. ‘You’ve got a few more moments of peace.’

Hélène was struck by the mournful irony of her smile.

‘Do they have a car now?’ the little girl asked.

‘Yes. Your father has earned a lot of money.’

‘Really? And what about my grandparents? Will they ever come to live here?’

‘I don’t know.’

But Hélène knew very well that her grandparents would never leave the Ukraine; a regular allowance would keep them away from the Karols for ever. That was the very first thing Bella would do with her fortune.

When Hélène thought about her grandparents she felt pity, which she hated because it seemed cowardly to her. She tried to put them out of her mind, but in spite of herself, their faces surged up in her memory. She remembered them running quickly, stumbling along the platform as the train was leaving. Her grandmother was crying, which hardly made her look any different, the poor woman; but grandfather Safronov remained his usual swaggering self as he stood tall, waving his cane.