The Wine of Solitude (23 page)

Gambling was no longer enough to calm the nerves of Boris Karol; he now needed champagne, women, late suppers, driving fast cars with the top down, throwing money around, the obsequious company of all the parasites in the world, everything he hadn’t experienced until that time, everything he had lacked in his youth, which he now latched on to hurriedly, fearfully, as if he could sense that life was flowing through his greedy hands and his time on earth growing shorter with every passing day.

At certain times in the early morning, when make-up was fading from old faces and the last streamers were being crushed underfoot, Hélène would study her father, her mother and the mad crowd around them, and would miss the days gone by when, in spite of everything, she’d had a semblance of a home and a family. She watched her father with clear-sighted despair. The false shirtfront of his dinner suit accentuated the yellowish pallor of his crumpled face. He dyed his moustache now, but the champagne diluted the
colour, and his old, sad mouth sagged slightly, its corners pulled tightly into a tense, weary pout. It seemed as if the fire that burned in him had consumed him from within, leaving him nothing more than a brittle skeleton that would crumble in the slightest breeze. Money flowed through his fingers. He personified the terrible image of a man who had realised his dreams. He loved this life so much. He loved the butler’s hunched shoulders, the way the little hussy looked at him as she walked past his table, brushing against him and smiling at Bella and Hélène, as if she were thinking, ‘You know all about it, don’t you? It’s the oldest profession in the world, isn’t it?’

He smiled at the prostitute, the black jazz players, the professional dancers, his wife’s lover …

Bella’s latest lover was a heavy, gloomy Armenian with oriental, almond-shaped eyes and the fleshy hips of a Mediterranean rug salesman. He amused Karol with his obsequiousness, his loquaciousness, and Hélène recognised the old familiar words that had rocked her to sleep as a child and seemed to be ever present in her life, like a fleeting, enigmatic melody: oil mines, gold mines in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, platinum mines and emerald mines, pearl fisheries, telephones and electric razors, corporations running cinemas, cheese dairies, dye factories, paper mills, tin mines, millions, millions, millions …

‘I’m the one who did this,’ thought Hélène with deadly, sad weariness, ‘me. We had Max … We would have had Max for ever … I wanted to change the course of our lives, as a child might try to stop a flood with his powerless hands, and this is the result: this fat Mediterranean lover, this pale, exhausted man and this old hag.’ She looked at her mother
with a feeling now devoid of hatred but with a kind of horror, seeing her ravaged, defeated face plastered with make-up, the scarlet line of her thin lips, her face where so many wrinkles, so many tears left their mark and all because of her; she thought all this with pity, terror and remorse. But then she thought hopelessly, ‘Everybody lives like this …’

She looked around her; so many women pretended to have young bodies but their faces were tragic, lined, scarred, furrowed beneath their make-up. So many men smiled at their wife’s lover, so many young girls spun around, like her, carefree and, to all appearances, happy. She thought of her dresses, her suitors, the dancing …

She gently touched her father’s arm. ‘Papa, that’s enough champagne. Darling Papa, you’ll make yourself ill.’

‘Not at all, how silly,’ he said impatiently.

One day he said, ‘You know, champagne gives you the strength to stay awake.’

‘But why stay awake?’

‘What else is there to do?’ he said with that sad little smile that barely floated across his lips before disappearing.

Hélène looked at the Armenian who was slyly, surreptitiously keeping Karol’s champagne glass full. ‘Why is he doing that? You’d think he didn’t understand that he’s old and ill and that wine is bad for him.’

The Armenian had the hips of a female dancer and at the same time possessed the same predatory, cunning graciousness found in characters portrayed in Persian miniatures. He had bluish-black slicked-back hair, a hooked nose and thick raspberry-coloured lips.

‘It isn’t possible,’ thought Hélène, appalled. ‘It just isn’t possible! He must have sold peanuts in the street when he
was young. But he won’t hurt Papa. She surely must be paying him. He knows very well that the money comes from Papa. It’s in his own best interest to keep Papa around as long as possible.’

One day he looked at her with his bright, insincere eyes with their long eyelashes and said, ‘Oh Mademoiselle Hélène, I do love Karol. Now, you won’t believe me, but I love him as if he were my father.’

‘Does she love him?’ wondered Hélène, as her mother danced in the arms of her lover and they passed each other on the brilliant parquet dance floor. ‘She’s old, she so hates being old; she’s buying herself an illusion …’

She didn’t understand that Bella was looking for something else: that feeling of danger that alone satisfied her and which Max, through his violence and jealousy, was able to quench within her, but the older she got the more she needed to feel stronger, more powerful emotions. She needed to think, ‘This man could murder me,’ and she would look at the fruit knife in her lover’s hand with a sensual shudder of terror.

Her lover, however, wasn’t an evil man, but he’d known for some time that Karol, aware of his own obsession with gambling, had put everything he owned in his wife’s name to avoid going bankrupt and losing all his money. He didn’t have anything against Karol; he was simply carried away by his lavish, florid oriental imagination. He liked Bella, but as a package; in his feelings for her he confused her face with the make-up that covered it, her pearls and diamonds with the furrowed wrinkles of her ageing flesh. He wouldn’t have killed Karol but, as he was already ill, he didn’t stop himself from giving fate a little push. He dreamed of seeing Karol dead and marrying the widow; he wouldn’t waste the money
on gambling; in his imagination he constructed images of vast, powerful ventures, allowed himself to get carried away by words like Trust … Holding … International Finance Company … as if they were expressions of love. Oh, he would know how to put Karol’s fortune to good use. He’d seduce politicians with wine, beautiful women, excellent meals, by spending money hand over fist … He turned his swizzle stick over and over in his fingers, dreaming of mines and oil wells, smiling at Hélène with a look of paternal tenderness that made her shudder.

Karol coughed, in pain, as he so often did recently. The Armenian sadly shook his head: the poor man was clearly completely exhausted. For a moment he tried to imagine a situation in which Karol might play some part, but if that happened everything would be uncertain; the money belonged to Karol, he had given it away and could take it back. He leaned towards Karol, smiled at him affectionately and placed his hand on his arm. ‘How about another glass of champagne? It’s lovely and cold, delicious …’

They went home in the early hours of the morning, Hélène’s arms full of dolls and other party novelties.

Bella was tired and yawned. ‘They’re always the same, these little parties,’ she said moodily, ‘deadly dull.’

‘Then why do you go?’ murmured Hélène.

‘What else do you want me to do with my time?’ Bella said sharply, ‘sit around and wait to die … or until you get married? You know,’ she added with a sudden flash of sincerity, ‘women should wait until they are the age I am now to have children … Do you think there’s anyone in the world who can do without love?’

In Biarritz, in the morning, when everyone in the luxury hotel was still asleep, Hélène would go out and run along the deserted beach. The hotel’s long empty corridors smelled of chilled cigar smoke; the sea breeze blew in through a large bay window open at one side with a clear, sonorous whisper, bringing with it little drops of moisture and the smell of salty air. Every now and then the lift brought up the last of the women, reeling with tiredness, their deep orange rouge fading on their cheeks, and the men in tuxedos whose faces looked green in the morning light.

It was autumn; the beach was empty; the waves rose so high that the sky peeking through them looked moist, iridescent, glistening with a thousand fires.

Hélène went into the sea, and she felt as if the salty water flowing over her body purified her and washed away her tiredness after all the late nights. She lay down in the water, looked at the sky above and laughed, thinking with gratitude, ‘It’s impossible to be unhappy when you have all this:
the smell of the sea, sand running through your fingers … the air, the breeze …’

She returned late, happy to feel her cool body beneath her dress, still wet from her swim; she had hastily wrung out her damp hair; nevertheless, she was a little ashamed of herself; she was close to feeling herself foolish in being able to find such perfect pleasure in this innocent way.

Life continued, mad and fast-paced, like an endless, meaningless race towards some invisible finishing point.

A new Russian nightclub had recently opened between Biarritz and Bidart; it was a small house whose walls were covered with crimson satin and the Imperial eagle embroidered in gold. Karol owned shares in the business: the pleasure of drinking was therefore enhanced by paying ten per cent less for every bottle.

That night the Karols were having guests; all around them people were feasting, drinking, loving, thanks to the generosity of Boris Karlovitch Karol. Every now and again a sudden, deep cough severely shook his fragile, beloved old chest, his poor human body, which already seemed to be collapsing, yearning for sleep and peace.

Opposite Hélène, the Grand Duke held court; his presence attracted the Americans like flies to honey. All of his entourage was there, low-ranking princes and authentic ones, both types penniless and greedy, oil merchants, international financiers, weapons manufacturers, professional dancers, former members of the Tsar’s Page Corps, women, both expensive and cheap, opium sellers and young girls … There wasn’t a single face at the table whose anxious, tense features Hélène could not see through its mask of luxury and nonchalance. The lights were low
and the beautiful night wafted in through the open bay window.

People also danced outside. The women’s dresses and their bodices decorated with jewels shimmered dimly in the dark, like fish scales; the slow dances made them seem as if they were floating at the bottom of an aquarium.

His Highness stood up; the black jazz players, drunk and sentimental, played ‘God Save the Tsar’ on their horns and cymbals. The august visitor went past a row of servants standing at attention; the women walked behind him, wrapped in their ermine coats and teetering on their high heels from fatigue, boredom and too much wine; the American women stood up; they were drunk; they formed a line and, as the cortège passed, made a deep curtsey as the heir to the Romanovs slowly exited, preceded by a lackey in a powdered wig carrying a flaming silver torch. He stopped in front of the Karols’ table, kissed Bella’s hand, gave a friendly wave to Karol and left.

‘How long have you known him?’ asked Hélène.

‘Ever since I lent him ten thousand francs,’ said Karol, laughing. He had retained his childlike laugh and the joyous grin that spread across his dry, delicate face, but the laughter ended in an aching shudder; he coughed, with less pain than usual, but a look of anguish appeared in his eyes; he took out his handkerchief and wiped his quivering lips; it was damp with blood. He looked at Hélène in terror.

‘What’s this? I … I must have burst a little blood vessel … you know? A very tiny blood vessel,’ he whispered.

He fell heavily back in his chair, looked around him as if it were the last time he might see these lights, these women,
this silvery blue night, but he was strong enough not to say anything, to pay for the last time and smile.

‘It’s nothing … It’s just annoying … it’s just a little blood vessel,’ he mumbled to his guests. ‘I must have burst a tiny little blood vessel … See, it’s stopped now … See you tomorrow …’

For a little while Boris Karol dragged himself to various spa towns, then to Switzerland. He returned to Paris a dying man. Right up until the last minute he tried to put a brave face on it and not admit defeat. Only once, when he was in a little spa in the Auvergne where the rain streamed down and a gloomy, greenish light peeked through the damp leaves, he said to Hélène, ‘It’s all over now …’

He was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror; he held two ebony brushes that he passed one after the other over his fine white hair, slowly smoothing it down. Suddenly he stopped and walked closer to the mirror; he could see the bright green grass from the lawn outside reflected in it, which made his pale, yellowish face look even more ill, worn out to within inches of death. Hélène sat beside him and listened sadly to the falling rain; he raised one long finger in the air, gave a melancholy smile and whistled an aria from La Traviata, softly singing the word, ‘Addio …’

Then he turned towards Hélène, looked at her almost harshly, nodded and said, ‘Yes, my girl, this is the way it is,
and neither you nor I can do anything about it.’ And he walked out of the room.

Meanwhile they seemed to be losing money everywhere: it went as easily as it had come and for no apparent reason. Karol was still gambling. Spitting up blood, avoiding both the doctors and Hélène, he locked himself away in the shabby little casinos in the spa towns; he gambled and lost every time. Despite feeling that he was going through a bad patch he persisted. He lost money on the Stock Market; he had shares in every business that went bankrupt.

‘Fortunately, I’ve put all the money in Bella’s name,’ he consoled himself. ‘When nothing’s left there will still be several million, but we have to hold on to that for the end …’

One day in Paris he spat up more blood than usual. Hélène was alone with him. He had just received a letter informing him that a company in which he held the majority of shares had gone bankrupt. He had read it impassively and all he said to Hélène was, ‘What rotten luck, eh? But things will work out …’