She spotted a street lamp in the distance, for there was one in every road; it gave off a pale light, surrounded by a reddish halo and only lit up a bit of dark ground and the rolling fog; she ran towards it, leaping through the darkness; she leaned against the street lamp, panting, hugging its bronze column covered in damp snow as if it were the living body of a friend. She held some snow in her hands; the icy contact calmed her down. She looked around desperately for another human being, but there was no one. The street was deserted. She turned in circles round the same tall houses, lost in the fog, always ending up back at the same place. At one point she bumped into a passer-by, but when she smelled his breath against her face, saw his strange, wild eyes looking her up and down, she felt as if her heart would stop beating out of terror; it took all her strength to free herself from his grip and run away again, far away, clenching her teeth and calling out, ‘Mademoiselle Rose! Where are you, where are you? Mademoiselle Rose!’

But deep down inside she was certain that she would never see her again. She finally stopped, whispering in despair, ‘I have to get home now, try to get home … Perhaps she’s at the house?’

She then remembered that, in any case, Mademoiselle Rose would soon be leaving.

‘If she has to die,’ she said out loud, hearing the words coming from her lips with painful surprise, ‘if it’s her time … My God, perhaps it’s better this way …’

Tears were streaming down her face; she felt that because she had stopped fighting destiny she had abandoned Mademoiselle Rose to her fate. She was walking along the quayside now; she could feel the granite of the stone walls against her hands; it was wet and icy; she was shivering from the cold; the wind had picked up and filled the air with an angry sound.

The smell of the water, that rotting odour of the canals in St Petersburg, which to her was the very breath of the city, suddenly lifted; the fog wafted away, rolled slowly far from her. She stood and looked at the water in the canal for a long time. ‘I’d happily throw myself in,’ she thought, ‘I want to die.’

But she knew very well that she was lying. Everything she could see at that moment, everything she felt, her own unhappiness, her solitude and this dark water, the little flames from the gaslights flickering in the wind, everything, right down to her feeling of despair, drove her to choose life.

She stopped and slowly wiped her forehead. ‘No, I won’t let them do it to me,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m brave …’

She forced herself to look at the water, to overcome the troubling pull of its pulsating currents; she took deep breaths, tasting the wind.

‘At least I have that,’ she thought. ‘I’m horrid, hard-hearted, I don’t know how to forgive, but I’m courageous. My God! Help me!’

And slowly, clenching her teeth to stop herself from crying, she found her way home.

6

Mademoiselle Rose died that night in hospital; some soldiers had carried her there, for she had fainted on a street corner. A letter she had in her coat pocket, the last letter she’d received from France, was used to identify her from the name on the envelope.

The Karols were informed. She hadn’t suffered, they told Hélène. Her tired heart had stopped beating. She’d had a fit of delirium, presumably because she was homesick … She must have been ill for a long time.

‘You poor thing,’ said Hélène’s mother. ‘She was so attached to you. We would have given her a modest pension and she would have lived a quiet life. Although she might have felt very alone, because we’re leaving and we couldn’t have taken her with us. Perhaps it’s for the best.’

However, so many people were dying that no one, not then and not later, had time to waste on consoling Hélène. ‘Poor little thing,’ they said. ‘Just imagine how frightened she must have been. I hope she doesn’t get sick. That’s all we need …’

The day came to an end and Hélène found herself alone in her empty room, surrounded by the dead woman’s personal things: the old photograph of her with her sisters when she was twenty, so faded you could barely see it; her fine hair framed her face like a wisp of smoke; she wore a velvet ribbon round her neck and a belt with a buckle round her slim waist. Hélène studied the photo for a long time. She didn’t cry. She felt as if the weight of her tears filled her heart, making it as hard and heavy as stone.

They were due to depart in two days’ time.