Hélène, who had quietly stepped into the room, watched her in surprised silence.

The sitting-room walls were covered in a cotton fabric that was meant to look like silk; it had once been flesh-coloured but was now dusty and drab. This rough cotton material was manufactured at the factory where Karol was the manager; it smelled of glue and fruit, and the local women used it to make their Sunday dresses and headscarves. But the furniture came from Paris, from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine: ottomans covered in green and raspberry velvet, torchères in carved wood, Japanese lanterns fringed with coloured beads. A lamp lit up the nail buffer absent-mindedly left on top of the piano. Bella’s nails sparkled under the light; they were round and curved with sharp tips, like claws. In the rare moments when she displayed any maternal affection, pressing her daughter to her breast, her nails almost always scratched Hélène’s bare arm or face.

The child inched her way into the room. Sometimes Bella stopped playing and fell silent; with her hands resting on the keyboard, she seemed to be waiting, listening, her heart full of hope. But from outside came nothing but the indifferent silence of the spring evening and the sound of the impatient wind pushing along the endless yellow dust from Asia.

‘When – it’s – all – over,’ sighed Madame Karol. Hélène watched the way she clamped her teeth together; it was as if she were eating a piece of fruit; her wide, bright eyes that seemed so harsh, so empty, beneath the curve of her slim eyebrows, were full of tears: sparkling water that welled up but never spilled over.

Hélène went and stood against the window, looking out into the street. Occasionally she would see an old carriage pulled by two slow-moving horses, driven by a coachman dressed in the Polish fashion: velvet waistcoat, puffy red sleeves and peacock feathers in his hat; it was Bella’s aunt, a Safronov from the older generation, a branch of the family that had kept its wealth, that hadn’t squandered its fortune, that didn’t need to marry off its daughters to insignificant little Jews who managed factories in the poor part of town. Lydia Safronov was thin and stiff with dried-out yellowish skin and shining dark eyes; her chest was ravaged by cancer, which she suffered with a sort of aggressive resignation; always cold, she wrapped herself in an ample, regal fur coat. On seeing her niece, Lydia Safronov would barely deign to nod in icy acknowledgement, her mouth pinched close and her face wearing an expression that was impenetrable, distant and full of bitter, cruel scorn. Sometimes her son Max sat next to her; he was still a thin young boy dressed in the grey uniform worn in secondary school; his cap bore the symbol of the Imperial eagle; he held his little head very high atop his long, fragile neck, with the same harsh and haughty attitude as his mother; he had a delicate hooked nose and seemed aware of its fine quality, just as he was aware of the lush richness of the horses, the carriage, and the quality of the expensive English rug covering his knees; his eyes were cold with a faraway look in them. Whenever they ran into each other in the street, Mademoiselle Rose would give Hélène a little nudge, and she would curtsey, lowering her head in a sullen manner; her cousin would briefly acknowledge her before turning away, and her aunt looked at her with pity through a gold lorgnette that sparkled in the sunlight.

But on this day, only one carriage passed slowly beneath the window; a woman was inside; she was holding a child’s coffin tightly to her breast, as if it were a bundle of clothing; this was how the poor people avoided paying for funerals. The woman’s face looked peaceful; she was chewing some sunflower seeds; she was smiling, doubtless happy to have one less mouth to feed, one less cry to break the silence of the night.

Suddenly the door opened and Hélène’s father came into the room.

Bella shuddered, quickly closing the piano, and looked anxiously at her husband. He never came home this early from the factory. For the first time in her life, Hélène saw her father’s face twitch slightly, a twitch that pulled his hollow cheeks to the side and which would come to represent for her the first sign of disaster, the mark of defeat on a man’s face, for Boris Karol never knew any other way to show he was upset, not then and not later, when he became old and ill.

He walked into the middle of the room, seemed to hesitate, then said with a little harsh, forced laugh, ‘Bella, I’ve lost my job.’

‘What?’ she cried.

He shrugged his shoulders and answered curtly, ‘You heard me.’

‘You’ve been let go?’

Karol pursed his lips. ‘That’s right,’ he said after a pause.

‘But why? Why? What did you do?’

‘Nothing,’ he said in a hoarse, weary voice, and Hélène felt a strange sense of pity as she heard the irritated little sigh that escaped through his clenched teeth. He lowered himself into a chair, the one nearest to him, and sat there motionless, his back hunched and arms dangling, looking down at the ground and whistling without realising it.

‘Nothing!’ Bella shouted, making him jump. ‘You must be mad! What did he say? What happened? But we’ll be penniless!’

She twisted her arms together with a sudden, supple movement that reminded Hélène of the serpents on the Medusa’s head she was drawing for her art teacher. From the delicate, convulsed mouth words, sighs and curses came flooding out: ‘What did you do, Boris? You have no right to hide anything from me! You have a family, a child! You weren’t let go for no reason! Did you play the stock market? I knew it! Admit it, go on, admit it! No? Well, then, did you lose money playing cards? At least say something, admit what happened, say something! Ah, you’re killing me!’

Hélène had slipped out through the open door. She went back to her room and sat down on the floor. She had heard them fighting so many times in her short life that she wasn’t overly concerned. They would shout, then they would stop. Nevertheless, her heart was heavy and tight in her chest.

‘The director called me in to see him,’ she heard him continue, ‘and since you want to know, Bella, he wanted to talk to me about you. Wait a moment. He told me you spent too much money. Just wait. You can have your say afterwards. He talked about your dresses, your trips abroad, which, according to him, I couldn’t possibly pay for on my salary.