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you close to my heart …’
    It was an old heart, one that to the youthful Hélène seemedso cold and so slow to come to life. Yet it beat anxiously, passionately; those old eyes looked down in timid hope, trying to find something familiar on the child’s face, an image, a distant memory …
    ‘Oh! Grandma, let me go,’ said Hélène.
    If Hélène wasn’t there, her grandmother did nothing for days on end; she folded her thin hands and laid them on her lap; they were dark and furrowed by age and the household chores she suddenly decided to do every now and then, finding a kind of humble pleasure in washing and ironing, and allowing herself to be shooed away by the cook. Her entire life was scarred by the marks of misfortune and unhappiness; she had experienced poverty, illness, the death of people she loved; her husband had cheated on her, betrayed her; she felt that her daughter and her husband could barely stand her. She had been born old, anxious, weary, while everyone around her was overflowing with vitality and passionate desires. But her main affliction was a kind of prophetic sadness; she seemed more inclined to fear the future than weep for the past. Her lamentations weighed heavily on her granddaughter; her foolish words caused Hélène to feel a rush of terror, terror that she felt lived deep within her heart, and which seemed to form part of some obscure legacy. Fear of being alone, fear of dying, fear of the dark and the dread that, on a day just like today, she might watch Mademoiselle Rose go out, never to return.
    She had often heard her friends’ mothers talking to Mademoiselle Rose with that hypocritically doting expression used when saying things children aren’t meant to understand: ‘If you were agreeable … We could go upto fifty roubles a month, or more. I’ve spoken to my husband about it. He’s very willing. You are sacrificing yourself, dear Mademoiselle Rose, and for what? Children are ungrateful creatures …’
    Life was unsettled, insecure, unstable. Nothing lasted. A merciless flood swept away peaceful days, the people you loved, carrying them far, far away, keeping you and them apart, for ever. A rush of anguish suddenly ran through the child, making her shudder; she sat in a corner holding a book, quiet and alone; she felt as if she could sense the solitude of the grave; the room became hostile and frightening; beyond the narrow circle of the light from the lamp, darkness reigned; the shadows slithered towards Hélène, rising to engulf her; she strained to push them away, like a swimmer pushing back the water with his arms. The sudden appearance of a pale ray of light beneath the door made her blood run cold. It was almost nightfall and Mademoiselle Rose wasn’t there … would never be there again … ‘She’s not coming back. One day she’ll disappear and I’ll never see her again.’
    No one would say anything to her. That’s how they had once hidden the fact that her dog had died. To avoid her annoying them with tears they’d said, ‘He’s sick, but he’ll be back …’ adding the torment of hope to her sadness. The day Mademoiselle Rose left they’d do exactly the same; they wouldn’t say a word to her; at suppertime she would be surrounded by lying faces: ‘Eat. Go to bed. She’s been held up. She’ll be back.’
    She could almost hear their hypocritical, pitying voices. She looked around her with hatred. Emptiness, silence, dismal tranquillity and the fear that cunningly digs at theheart to torture it – these were her only companions. She was forced to live with the anguish that flowed through her veins, to suffer it as if it were some hereditary evil; she could feel the weight of anxious terror heavy on her delicate bones, the same terror that had bowed the shoulders and drained the faces of so many of her race.
    But when she was ten years old she began to find a melancholy charm in the solitude of these Sundays. She liked the extraordinary silence