I won’t let anyone frighten me. I’m enjoying myself, I’m enjoying this,’ she mused; and to her the battle, the danger, the risk were all transformed into a terrible but exciting game; she suddenly felt herself stronger, more mockingly detached than she had ever felt before or would ever feel again. She was eager to enjoy the feeling, as if she had a premonition that from this moment on, everyone she loved in the future, every child she might love, would steal a little bit of this strength, this cold-blooded courage from her, leaving her just like everyone else, part of the herd, pressing their families, their own flesh and blood, tightly against them in the darkness. No one spoke. Every mother covered her children with her skirts to protect them from the cold night, all the while convinced that none of them would live to see the dawn. She could hear belts full of gold creaking in the darkness; a child was crying softly. Old Haas’s shawl slipped to the ground; he moaned and sighed pleadingly; his elderly wife worried that anxiety and the freezing cold night would kill him: he had a heart condition. Tears of irritation fell down her face.

‘My God! You can be such a nuisance,’ she said, sounding angry yet loving, ‘My poor husband …’

Max and Fred Reuss had gone to the village to try to find some horses. The night passed by. They still hadn’t returned.

‘Does anyone have any spirits?’ asked Madame Reuss. ‘We must give them something to drink when they get back. It’s such a cold night.’

She spoke in a soft, calm voice, as if she were talking about a peaceful stroll on the plains.

Hélène shrugged her shoulders. ‘Poor woman,’ she thought. ‘Doesn’t she realise they might never make it back?’

Madame Haas went into her room, clattering the keys that swung from her belt; she soon returned with a flask of alcohol. Madame Reuss took the bottle and thanked her. It was only when someone used his cigarette lighter that Hélène could see how deathly pale the young woman’s face was.

‘She loves him too much to give up hope,’ she thought, as regret – regret she felt too late – rose up in her soul. ‘When you love someone as much as that, you don’t believe they can die. You think your love protects them. Even if he doesn’t come back, even if he gets lost in the snow or is hit by a stray bullet, she’ll wait for him … faithfully. Is it possible she hasn’t noticed anything? Oh, quite the opposite, she has known for a long time, but she must be used to it. She says nothing. She’s right. Her Fred really does belong to her.’

She looked at her mother, who was trembling and anxiously trying to find a light in the dark night.

‘But why are you so anxious, my dear?’ Madame Haas said to her. ‘Your daughter is with you.’ Her voice was soft and malicious.

It seemed to Hélène that all the people gathered there were opening up their hearts to her, without intending to; she was sitting on the window ledge, swinging her legs towards the shapeless mass huddled in the darkness, listening to the sound of incessant gunfire; it was low-pitched and intense. A few minutes later they all left the room and climbed up the stairs, for they were afraid that stray bullets might come in through the windows. Hélène alone remained there with the young woman with tuberculosis; she had silently come in, sat down on the piano stool and started to play, feeling her way across the keyboard, separating herself from the families who were as warm and loving as cattle in a stable. Hélène pulled back a shutter; at once the moonlight shimmered on to the keyboard and the thin hands that played such passionate, impish music.

‘Mozart,’ said the young woman.

Then they fell silent. They had never exchanged a single word; they would never see each other again. Hélène held her head in her hands and listened to the tender, delicate, mocking harmonies, the clear, light chords, the laughter that scoffed at darkness and death, and she felt the dizzying, proud exhilaration of being herself, Hélène Karol, ‘stronger, freer than all of them …’.

In the morning someone called her: the horses were there.

‘There might not be enough room for everyone,’ said Reuss. ‘Women and children first.’

But everyone said, ‘No.