The Wine of Solitude Read Online Free Page B

detach herself from the noise of the faraway storm, knowing that she had a peaceful refuge beside this calm young woman who sewed in the lamplight. It was like hearing the sound of the wind in a warm house whose windows are closed.
    She could hear Bella’s voice: ‘If it weren’t for the child, I’d leave you! I’d leave right now!’
    She would often say this when her husband got annoyed. Occasionally Karol got irritated if he found the house in a mess, or when she had bought a new hat with a pink feather, and it was sitting in its box on the table while the roast was burning or the tablecloth needed mending. But Bella said she had never claimed to be a good housekeeper; she hated everything to do with housework and only lived to enjoy herself. ‘That’s how I am. You’ll just have to take me as I am,’ she would say.
    Boris Karol would shout, and then stop shouting, for quarrelling made the burden of this marriage, balanced painfully on his shoulders, fall off and roll on to the ground, and it was easier to avoid this: to resign himself to bearing it, rather than having to bend down and heave it back up on to his shoulders once more. He also vaguely feared her threat: ‘I’ll leave you.’ He knew men chased after her, that men found her attractive. He loved her …
    ‘Good Lord,’ thought Hélène, half asleep, her long legs pushing against the end of the small wooden bed that got no bigger even though she did, and which every year they forgot to replace. She snuggled up under a satin quilt with delicate stitching which, despite the fact that MademoiselleRose mended it almost every day, was losing its stuffing. ‘Good Lord, I wish she would just hurry up and leave so they stop talking about it! If only she would die!’
    Every night when she said her prayers (‘Dear God, please keep Papa and Mama safe and sound …’), she replaced, in murderous hope, her mother’s name with that of Mademoiselle Rose.
    ‘What’s the point of shouting and making useless threats?’ she thought. ‘Why talk just for the sake of it? That woman is impossible; she’s the cross I have to bear.’
    When she was talking to herself, Hélène used words that grown-ups used, words that were mature and wise, and came naturally to her, but she would have been too embarrassed to say them aloud, just as she would have found it ridiculous to walk around in grown-up finery; when she spoke, she had to translate her words into simpler, less elegant sentences, which made her sound rather hesitant and gave her a slight stutter that irritated her mother.
    ‘Sometimes this child seems like an idiot. You’d think she had landed on earth from the moon!’
    When she was asleep, though, sleep, merciful sleep brought her back to her true age: her dreams were full of movement, energy and cries of joy.
    Some while later, Karol went away and the evenings became peaceful once more. He had found a job managing a group of gold mines deep in the Siberian forest. It was the beginning of a road that would lead him to wealth. Meanwhile the house was empty. Only Grandmother stayed at home, silently wandering from one room to another, while her husband and daughter each went their own way as soon as dinner was over. Hélène enjoyed the kind of sweet,exhilarating sleep of childhood that immerses you in a pool of invigorating peace. When she woke up, the room was filled with sunshine. Mademoiselle Rose was dusting the chipped old furniture. She wore a pleated black sateen apron that protected her clothing, but underneath she was already neatly dressed in the corset and short boots she wore to town, the collar of her blouse held closed by a little gold brooch and her hair done. Never was her hair dishevelled, nor did she ever wear a loose-fitting dressing gown or those shapeless skirts that hung from the fat Russian women. She was tidy, precise, meticulous, a little ‘aloof’, somewhat scornful: a Frenchwoman through and through. She never fussed; she