The Wine of Solitude Read Online Free PDF Page B

a rusty boot that creaked in the wind, a large golden loaf of bread with a thick crust made of ice, or an enormous pair of scissors, gaping half-open, ready to slice off a piece of the dark sky. Caretakers sat in the entrance-ways to buildings, shiny icicles hanging from their clothes. Both sides of the street were piled high with snow as tall as a man; it was hard, compact and sparkled beneath the flames of the lanterns.
    They were going to visit the Grossmanns, whose children were friends of Hélène’s. The Grossmanns were a well-established, wealthy, middle-class family and they despised Madame Karol. The housekeeper showed them in.
    From the next room, they heard a woman’s voice: ‘Not all at once, my darlings,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re messing up my hair, you’re killing me!’ Then joyful children shouting, ‘Mama! Mama!’ Their voices rose and fell like the virtuoso scales that flow from one end of the keyboard to the other. Then came a man’s voice: ‘Come now, calm down; leave your mother in peace, my darlings …’
    Hélène stood in silence, eyes lowered; Mademoiselle Rose took her hand and led her into the room.
    The laughter stopped. The sitting room looked the same as the Karols’. It had the same golden torchère, the same black piano and velvet stool: all the newly married couples ordered these things while on honeymoon in Paris. But to Hélène everything seemed brighter and prettier than at home. In the middle of the room a woman was stretched out on a sofa upholstered in flowered fabric.
    It was Madame Grossmann. Hélène knew her, but she had never seen her like this before, in a light-pink dressing gown with a tangle of children hanging from her arms. Her husband, a bald young man with a fat cigar in his mouth, was standing beside the sofa, leaning towards his wife; he looked bored to death and his eyes wandered a little impatiently from his family in front of him to the door, through which he would clearly have liked to escape. But Hélène wasn’t looking at him; she was eagerly studying the young woman with her three children whose impatient little hands tugged at her dishevelled black hair; the youngest child, nestled in his mother’s arm, gently nipped at her exposed cheek and neck like a little puppy.
    ‘She isn’t wearing any make-up,’ Hélène thought bitterly.
    The two older children sat at their mother’s feet; the eldestgirl was pale and sickly, her dark curls coiled round her ears, but the second-eldest had great pink cheeks that looked as if you could eat them; you could imagine them melting in your mouth when you kissed her, like ripe fruit.
    ‘I don’t have such beautiful cheeks,’ thought Hélène. ‘No, I don’t.’ Then she noticed Grossmann’s face, his tense, controlled smile, his eyes fixed on the door. ‘He’s bored,’ she mused with malicious satisfaction; sometimes, thanks to some mysterious power in her soul, she seemed able to sense the thoughts and feelings of others.
    ‘Hélène, hello,’ Madame Grossmann said sweetly.
    She was a thin, unattractive woman, but with the liveliness and grace of a bird; there had been a slight note of pity in her voice.
    Hélène lowered her head; her heavy fur-lined coat was making her feel unbearably hot; she paid little attention to the conversation going on above her head.
    ‘I’ve brought a pattern for a collar for Nathalie …’
    ‘Oh, Mademoiselle Rose, you are so very kind. Hélène can take off her coat and play with my girls for a bit, can’t you, Hélène?’
    ‘Oh, no! Thank you, Madame, but it’s late …’
    ‘Very well. Another time, then.’
    The pink lamp cast such a soft, warm light … Hélène looked at the gossamer dressing gown, decorated with chiffon flounces; the three girls pressed against it, cocooned themselves into its fold, without being afraid of crumpling it. Their mother stroked the three dark heads, one after the other, as she spoke.
    ‘They’re all ugly,’