The Wine of Solitude

by Irene Nemirovsky

  As Hélène wandered through the house, drawn to it by its overwhelming sense of abandonment and sadness, Fred Reuss came up to her and pulled her hair. ‘Leave it be!’ He laughed. ‘It smells old, miserable and dead. Come with me, young lady.’ He pointed towards the icy road that went down a little incline on to a plain. ‘Let’s go!’

  The Finnish sledges were steered by skaters who stood behind the chair in which the other person sat. But this was too slow for Hélène’s and Reuss’s liking; they both climbed on to the back and launched the sledge into the snow. It went rushing down the hill, faster and faster; the wind blew into their ears, burning them harshly.

  ‘Be careful, be careful!’ cried Fred and his joyous laughter rang out in the clear icy air. ‘Careful! The tree! The rock! We’re falling! We’re going to die! Hold on tight, Hélène. Stamp your foot against the ground. Like this. Again. Again! Faster … Oh, this is so wonderful.’

  Gasping for breath, they slid silently along with the dizzying speed you feel in a dream, down the long hill, along the icy white path on to the plain. They kept on going until the sledge hit a tree stump and threw its passengers into the snow. Ten times, a hundred times, they started over again, never tiring, hauling the sledge up to the top, then sliding down the long, icy hill.

  Hélène could feel the young man’s hot breath against her neck; the biting cold made tears run down her face but she couldn’t wipe them away: as they sped along, the wind dried them on her cheeks. They both shouted out with joy as they stamped on the frozen ground, shrieking like children, without even realising it. The little sledge shot forward, hurtling down the hill like an arrow.

  ‘Listen,’ Fred said after a while, ‘it’s not going fast enough. What we need is a real sledge.’

  ‘How can we get one?’ asked Hélène. ‘The last time we smashed it up and ever since the driver is careful to lock up the shed. But I saw one there in the barn …’

  They ran back to the barn and took the most beautiful sledge they could find; it was lined in red, with a little row of bells hanging from its sides. They had some difficulty getting it going, but once it started picking up speed, nothing in the world could go as fast; the snow flew into their faces, into their panting, half-open mouths, blinding them, whipping their cheeks. Hélène couldn’t see a thing. The brilliant whiteness of the plain was dazzling beneath the sharp reddish winter sun that cast a scarlet glow on to the snow. Little by little, though, it grew paler, turned pink.

  ‘This is so thrilling,’ thought Hélène.

  They stopped counting how many times they flew down the hill. Finally, after they were thrown into a ravine and barely made it out, their cheeks scratched by the icy pine needles, Reuss, who laughed until he cried, said, ‘We’re going to crack our heads open, that’s for sure! Let’s go back to the calm little Finnish sledge.’

  ‘Never! Rolling around in the snow is the best part.’

  ‘Ah, really? So that’s what you like the most?’ murmured Reuss. He pulled her towards him and held her tightly against him for a moment. He seemed to hesitate; she stood pressed against him, looking at him with her joyful eyes that had rediscovered all their innocence.

  ‘Well then, if you like rolling around in the snow,’ he said suddenly, ‘climb on to my shoulders.’

  He grabbed her round the waist, helped her perch on his shoulders, then threw her into the deep snow two feet in front of him. She shouted with pleasure and fear; she plunged into the snow as if it were a feathered nest; snow ran down her neck through a gap in her sweater; it got inside her gloves, filled her mouth with the icy sweet taste of sorbet. Hélène’s heart pounded with happiness. She looked with anguish at the early dusk sweeping across the sky.

  ‘We’re not going home yet, are we? We can stay a while longer, can’t we?’ she begged. ‘It’s not dark yet …’

  ‘We do have to go home,’ said Fred with regret.

  She stood up, shook herself off and they walked back up the road. 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. When they played together in the snow with his two boys, she sensed that he didn’t go endlessly up and down the little hill in order to be with them, nor even to be able secretly to kiss her, but rather because, like her
, he loved more than anything the pure air, the sun, shouting and falling into the soft, damp snow. From that moment on they spent nearly all their time together. Hélène felt the most delicious, the most indulgent tenderness towards him, a tenderness that continued to grow, ever intensifying the exciting taste of his kisses. But what she liked most was the feeling of pride he gave her, her awareness of her power as a woman. She so enjoyed seeing Fred choose her over the young women who looked down on her because they were twenty! Sometimes she deliberately distanced herself from him, enjoying his silent fury when, instead of meeting him in the garden where he was waiting for her, she would go and sit beside his wife, eyes lowered, and sew. Then he would grab her by the hair as she ran down the stairs on to the terrace and whisper angrily, ‘So young and already as horrible as a real woman!’

  Then he would laugh, and Hélène never tired of seeing the little grimace at the corner of his mouth, the flash of desire that turned his face pale. Nevertheless, he knew what kind of power he held over her.

  ‘When you’re older, you’ll think of me with gratitude, because if I’d wanted to … First of all, I could have made you suffer so much that it would haunt you for the rest of your life and you would never again have such absolute confidence about love. And also … you’ll understand what I mean later on and you’ll feel a great deal of friendship for me. You’ll say: “He was a good-for-nothing, a womaniser, but with me he did the right thing.” Either that, or: “What a fool he was.” It will depend a lot on what kind of husband you end up with …’

  It was nearly spring; the shiny tree trunks, damp and dark, seemed to be coming alive through some secret force. Beneath the thick layer of snow you could hear the first rush of trapped water breaking free; the ditches, no longer covered in fresh snow, were black with dried mud. Every day the sound of the cannons grew clearer: the White Army, the ordinary troops that would later become the army of the new republic, was making its way down from the north.

  Everyone had lost their calm and arrogance: in their rooms at night they feverishly sewed shares and foreign money into their belts and the linings of their clothing. Amid this turmoil no one gave a thought to Hélène or Fred Reuss. They sat in the sitting room, where the windows glowed red as soon as night fell, for the fires were getting closer, a moving, pulsating circle that surrounded the village; and when the wind blew in from the east, it brought with it the faint smell of smoke and gunpowder. Hélène and Fred were alone; they exchanged long, silent kisses on the hard little bamboo settee that swayed and creaked in the darkness. The door was open and they could hear the sound of footsteps and voices in the hall. There was a shortage of oil, so the lamp gave off an intermittent reddish glow. Hélène forgot everything else in the world; she was sitting on Fred’s lap; she could feel his heart beneath her cheek; it was pounding, missing a beat; she loved his dark, smiling eyes that closed so sensuously.

  ‘Your wife … Be careful!’ she would sometimes say, without moving.

  But he didn’t hear her; he was slowly drinking in the breath from her parted lips.

  ‘Ah, leave me in peace, it’s so dark, no one will see us. And besides, I don’t care,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t care about anything …’

  ‘How quiet the house is tonight,’ she said at last, pulling away from him.

  He lit a cigarette and sat down on the window ledge. The night was impenetrable, heavy, without even a trace of light; ice in the shape of teardrops sparkled on the windows. The old pine trees gently creaked; their branches swished with a stifled sound, like someone sighing. Between the trees the light of a lantern suddenly appeared.

  ‘What’s that?’ Hélène asked absent-mindedly.

  Reuss didn’t reply; leaning out of the window, he watched the lights as they moved, for there were many now; they had sprung up all over, flickering, disappearing, reappearing, criss-crossing like dancers in a ballet. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t understand … I can see one, two, three, women’s cloaks,’ he said, pressing his face to the window, ‘but what can they be looking for here? They’re looking for something in the snow,’ he said again, counting each of the little flames that encircled the house, until gradually they disappeared.

  He walked back over to Hélène, who sat motionless; she smiled, finding it hard to keep her eyes open: from dawn until dusk they’d played on sledges, skied, raced through the countryside, and these endless kisses … When night fell all she dreamed of was her bed and the long, wonderful hours of sleep until morning.

  He sat down beside her and began kissing her again without worrying about the open door. Feeling eager excitement, she basked in these slow, silent kisses, in the reddish glow of the lamp that flickered and smoked, in this perfect security, this lightness, this feeling that the entire world could crumble around them and that nothing would ever be as wonderful as the taste of his moist mouth that she clung to with hers, the way he caressed her with his strong, supple hands. Sometimes she would stretch out her arms and push him away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he would say. ‘Am I frightening you?’

  ‘No. Why?’ she would reply. And her childlike innocence, as she allowed herself to be kissed like a woman, aroused his desire even more.

  ‘Hélène,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes?’

  He murmured something; his words tailed away as if by some mysterious intoxication; his pale skin, his dishevelled hair, his trembling lips terrified her, but what she felt most was the sensation of wild, proud pleasure.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘No,’ she said, smiling.

  He would never hear a word of affection from her, a confession of love.

  ‘He doesn’t love me,’ she thought. ‘He’s getting pleasure out of this and it’s only because I don’t act like a docile, silly little girl in love that he still wants me and doesn’t get bored with me.’

  She thought she was so wise, so mature, so womanly …

  ‘I don’t love you, my darling, but I like you,’ she said.

  He pushed her away angrily. ‘You little hag, get away, I hate you!’

  Madame Haas came into the room. ‘Have you seen what’s going on?’ she exclaimed, upset.

  ‘No, what is it?’

  She didn’t reply, just picked up the lamp, held it up to the window and used the flames to melt the ice that covered the glass. ‘I’m sure I saw the servants leave, an hour ago. They were running towards the forest and they haven’t come back.’

  She pressed her face against the window, but it was pitch dark outside; she opened the window a bit; her grey hair flew about in the wind.

  ‘Where were they going? It’s impossible to see anything. This will all end badly. The White Army is getting closer every day. Do you think they’ll come and warn us when they intend to take over the village? But who listens to an old woman? You’ll see, though, you’ll see! I hope to God I’m wrong, but I can feel something bad is happening,’ she cried, her voice shrill and plaintive, shaking her head like an elderly Cassandra.

  Hélène stood up, walked over to the kitchen door and opened it; they saw that the fire was lit and continued to burn in the empty room, lighting up the table that had been laid with crockery and the food for dinner. But not a single soul was in the large room, normally full of the sound of voices and footsteps. The laundry room next door was also deserted, but the ironing boards had been left open with damp sheets carefully hanging over them: it looked as if someone had come to fetch the servants and they had immediately run away.

  Hélène went outside and stood on the steps; she called out, but no one replied.

  ‘They took the dogs!’ she said, going back inside as she shook the snow from her bare head. ‘I can’t hear them, yet they know my voice very well …’

  A woman appeared. ‘The White Army is surrounding the village!’ she shouted.

  Doors opened; everyone held a lit candle, for it was the only way to light the house and these little flickering flames flew from room to room; t
he children woke up and started crying.

  Hélène went back into the sitting room; it had gradually filled up with people. The women pressed their faces to the windows; they spoke to each other quietly.

  ‘But it isn’t possible … we would have heard them …’

  ‘Why? Do you think they make announcements?’ asked Madame Haas sarcastically.

  ‘Get that woman out of here,’ Reuss whispered in Hélène’s ear. ‘If I have to listen to her any more I’ll wring the old crow’s neck.’

  ‘Listen!’ cried Hélène.

  The kitchen door banged violently in the silence. Everyone stopped talking.

  One of the servants appeared at the door; she was an elderly Russian cook whose son was in the Red Guard; her cloak was covered in snow and her face looked exhausted and defeated; her dishevelled white hair fell over her forehead.

  She looked at the women all around her, crossed herself and said, ‘Pray for the souls of Hjalmar, Ivan, Olaf and Eric. They were taken prisoner tonight by the White Army, along with some other boys from the village. They were taken and shot, then their bodies were just thrown somewhere in the forest. We women went to look for the bodies to bury them, but the priest refused to let us into the cemetery, saying that Communist dogs didn’t deserve any graves on Christian soil. We’re going to bury them in the forest ourselves. God help us!’

  She slowly walked away and closed the door. Hélène opened the window and watched them disappear into the night, each one carrying a shovel and a lantern that lit up the snow.

  ‘But what about us? Us!’ yelled Levy. ‘What’s going to happen to us in all this?’

  Behind Hélène, a mass of buzzing voices rose up.

  ‘We have nothing to fear from the White Army, that’s for sure, but we’ve landed right in the middle of a battlefield. The best thing would be to leave right now.’