In the field of snow, only a single band of light remained and darkness fell strangely quickly; it was a soft, lilac colour; in the luminous sky the pale winter moon rose slowly above a frozen little lake. They didn’t speak. Their footsteps echoed over the frozen earth. Far, far away in the distance, they heard the muted sound of a cannon. They only half listened to it. For months now the low rumbling was so constant that they had stopped hearing it. But where was it coming from? Who was firing? Whom were they firing at? When faced with a certain level of horror the human mind becomes saturated and reacts with indifference and egotism. They walked side by side, tired and happy. Hélène could feel Reuss staring at her. Suddenly he stopped and took her face in his hands. He brought her cheek closer to his, seemed to look in astonishment for a moment at its smoothness, at the hint of red, so warm and passionate rising up to her skin, and breathed in her face as if it were a rose; the kiss was hesitant, settling in the middle of her half-open lips, a swift, gentle kiss as passionate as fire. Her first kiss, the first time a man’s lips had ever touched hers this way.

Her initial reaction was one of fear and anger. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried. ‘Are you mad?’

She picked up a handful of snow and threw it into the young man’s face; he jumped aside and avoided being hit. She heard him laugh.

‘I forbid you to touch me,’ she shouted in a rage. ‘Do you hear me?’ And she ran along the dark frozen path in the direction of the house; she could feel the taste of eager young teeth on her lips, but she refused to allow her thoughts to linger there, to savour this new, passionate joy.

‘Kissing me as if I were some chambermaid,’ she thought, and she didn’t stop running until she’d reached her mother’s room. With only a cursory knock she burst in.

Bella and Max were sitting on the settee in silence. Hélène had seen, walked in on, many other couples. But what troubled her this time was something strange, something new, something tender about the intimacy of these two people, the aura of love that surrounded them, not vice or passion, but the most human, the most ordinary kind of love.

Bella slowly turned her head. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hélène, her heart aching, ‘nothing … I thought … I …’ She fell silent.

‘Go outside, then,’ said her mother. ‘It isn’t dark yet. I saw Fred Reuss; he was looking for you. Go out with him and the children …’

‘Do you want me to go and find him?’ asked Hélène, a melancholy, sarcastic little smile hovering on her lips. ‘I’ll go if you want me to …’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, ‘off you go.’

4

The next day was a Sunday. Hélène walked into the little sitting room and breathed on the frozen windows to see the sky. Everything seemed extraordinarily joyous, clear and peaceful; children dressed in white played in the snow-covered garden; the sun was shining; the house smelled of warm cakes and cream, mixed with the scent of newly cleaned wooden floors. You could breathe in the day with all its freedom and innocence.

Hélène smiled as she stood in front of the old mirror; it reflected the sun as a distant, hazy, bluish form, like when you lean over water on a summer’s day; she looked at her starched white linen dress; she saw Fred Reuss come in and, without turning round, nodded at him in the mirror.

They were alone. He pulled her against him less harshly than the day before, but with a kind of mocking tenderness that was unfamiliar to her. She let him kiss her, even leaned in towards him, offering her face, her hands, her lips, savouring waves of delight, aching waves of bliss that pierced straight through her body.

She felt he was younger than she was, with a persistent, eternal kind of youthfulness, which, in her eyes, was undoubtedly his most attractive feature. He was as tender, giving, trusting, mischievous, hot-blooded and happy as a child.