We all go together.’

Bella took Max’s hand. ‘All together …’

Only then did she remember that Hélène was there. ‘Do you have your coat? And a shawl?’ she asked quickly. ‘I still have to think of everything for a girl your age.’

Hélène made her way over to Reuss. ‘Where are you going? Can’t we go together?’

‘No. We have to go our separate ways at the edge of the forest so we don’t attract attention, and everyone will go with his own family.’

‘I understand,’ she murmured.

Their carriages were waiting, lined up outside the door, just as when they were going to dance with the Red Guard, all now dead and buried.

The horizon was lit up with distant fires, and the pine trees covered in snow looked pink beneath the soft grey sky of the early dawn.

‘This is goodbye,’ said Fred. He secretly pressed his lips against Hélène’s cold cheek.

‘Goodbye,’ he said softly, ‘my poor darling …’

They walked away from each other.

5

After a long, exhausting journey the Karols ended up in Helsinki in the spring; it was a bright, peaceful, happy little town. Lilac bushes were in blossom in every street. It was the time of year when the sky is never dark, but keeps a milky light until morning, like the soft transparency of dusk in May.

Hélène was sent to board with Fru Martens, the widow of a Finnish minister, a respectable person with many virtues and many children. She was a short, thin, supple woman with blond hair, dry skin and a pinkish nose that had been frozen some time in the past and was now chapped and purplish in the middle. She taught Hélène German and read her Mutter Sorge out loud. While she read, Hélène watched a little pointy bone move around beneath the yellowish skin of her old neck, as prominent as an Adam’s apple; she didn’t listen to a word, daydreaming instead.

She wasn’t unhappy, just bored to tears. It wasn’t only Fred Reuss she missed. Quite the opposite, she had forgotten Fred Reuss strangely quickly. But she missed the freedom, the open spaces, the danger, the full life she had led that she couldn’t erase from her memory.

In the evening, when the little Martenses sang ‘Tannenbaum, oh, Tannenbaum, wie grün sind deine Blätter!’ she listened with pleasure to their soft, sonorous voices, but at the same time she would think, ‘Oh, for the sound of cannons! For danger, anything just to feel alive! To live! Or to be a child like the others … But no, it’s too late for that. I’m only sixteen, but my heart is filled with poison.’

The autumn moon spread its cool, clear light over the little sitting room and its ornamental green pot plants; she walked over to the window and looked at the bay shimmering in the darkness.

‘I want my revenge. Will I have to die without ever getting back at them?’

Ever since the night when the idea first crossed her mind she continually embellished it, enjoyed it.

‘To take her Max away from her! To make both of them suffer the way they made me suffer! I didn’t ask to be born. Oh, how I would have preferred never to have been born. No one gave a thought to me, that’s for sure. They brought me into this world and left me to grow up alone. Well, that’s not enough! It’s a crime to have children and not give them an atom, a crumb of love. I can’t give up the idea of revenge. Don’t make me, Lord! I think I would rather die than give up that idea. To take her lover away from her! Me, little Hélène!’

Only on Sundays did Hélène see her mother and Max. They would arrive together, stay a short time, then leave. Sometimes Max would place a few marks on the table: ‘You can buy yourself some sweets …’

After he left she would give the money to the servants and it would take a very long time to stop her entire body from quivering with hatred.

In the meantime she noticed that something had changed between her mother and Max: it was a subtle change and difficult to define. But the way they spoke to one another was different and so were their silences. They had always quarrelled, but now the tone of their arguments was more bitter, full of impatience and anger.

‘They’re becoming a married couple!’ Hélène mused.

She cruelly studied her mother’s face for a long time; she could watch her as much as she liked: her mother’s harsh eyes never fell on her; Bella seemed completely transfixed by Max; she would eagerly scrutinise every change in his features, while he looked away, as if he could barely stand her looking at him.

Bella’s face was beginning to age; its muscles were slackening; Hélène could see wrinkles beneath the powder and rouge that the make-up filled in without being able to hide; they stood out as deep, fine lines at the corners of her eyes, her lips and on her temples. The painted surface of her skin was cracking, losing its smooth, creamy texture, becoming coarser, rougher. On her neck appeared the triple creases that meant she was in her forties.

One day they arrived after a longer, more serious quarrel than usual: Hélène could tell immediately by the sad, annoyed expression on her mother’s face, by the quivering of her tense mouth.

Bella angrily took off her fur coat and threw it on to the bed.