was inevitable, a part of her own destiny. It was not only Norbert's grave that bound her to this land of ice, but also that somber Russian life experience, whose intoxicating poison she felt entering her veins.
From being a respectable doctor's wife, known in the entire town, Albertine had become transformed into a most strange widow – a Frenchwoman who seemed to find it hard to make up her mind to return to her country. Worse still, each time she came back again!
She was still too young and too beautiful to avoid the malicious gossip of Boyarsk society. Too unusual to be accepted as she was. And soon too poor.
Charlotte noticed that after each trip to Paris, they settled into smaller and smaller apartments. At the school where she had been admitted, thanks to a former patient of her father's, she quickly became 'that Lemonnier.' One day her teacher made her come to the blackboard – but not to test her… When Charlotte stood before her, the lady looked at the little girl's feet and, with a disdainful smile, asked, 'What do you have on your feet, Mademoiselle Lemonnier?'
The thirty pupils rose from their seats, craning their necks and staring. On the well-polished parquet floor they saw two woolen coverings, two 'shoes' that Charlotte had concocted herself. Crushed by all these stares, Charlotte lowered her head and involuntarily screwed up her toes inside the socks, as if she wanted to make her feet disappear…
At that time they lived in an old
She liked the
One day a splinter of ice broke beneath her feet unusually loudly. Charlotte was surprised – she had already been home a good half hour, all the snow on her coat and her
It was thus that the terrible word
Albertine no longer had anything to hide from her daughter. From now on it was Charlotte who would be seen going into the pharmacy and murmuring timidly, 'It's for Madame Lemonnier's medicine…'
She always returned home alone, crossing the vast wastelands that separated their cluster of houses from the last streets of the town, with its shops and lighting. Often a snowstorm would descend on these dead spaces. Tired of struggling against a wind laden with ice crystals, deafened by its whistling, one evening Charlotte stopped in the midst of this desert of snow, turning her back on the squalls, her gaze lost in the giddy flight of the snowflakes. She had an intense awareness of her own life, the warmth of her thin body concentrated into a minuscule 'I.' She felt the tickling of a drop that crept under the earflap of her
The city with chestnut-lined avenues was transformed into a fine spangle of gold that glittered in her eyes, but nobody noticed. Charlotte could even glimpse its brilliance in the reflection of a beautiful brooch on the dress of a young lady with a capricious and haughty smile: she was sitting in a fine armchair in the middle of a large room with elegant furniture and silk cushions at the windows.
'…
She rounded her lips and made the sound last until it was lost in a velvety 'r.' The young orator, with a sullen expression, resumed her declamation. This was the daughter of the governor of Boyarsk. Charlotte gave her French lessons every Wednesday. She had initially hoped that she might become the friend of this very well groomed adolescent, hardly older than herself. Now, no longer hoping for anything, she endeavored simply to give a good lesson. Her pupil's swift, scornful glances did not find their mark anymore. Charlotte listened to her, intervening from time to time, but her gaze was lost in the glitter of the beautiful amber brooch. Only the governor's daughter was allowed to wear an open-collared dress at school, with this adornment at its center. Conscientiously, Charlotte pointed out all the mistakes of pronunciation or grammar. And from the gilded depths of the amber arose a city with beautiful autumn foliage. She knew that for a whole hour she would have to bear the little grimaces of this great, plump, beautifully dressed child, and then, in the corner of the kitchen, receive from the hands of a maid her parcel, the leftovers from a meal; then she must wait in the street for a good opportunity to find herself alone with the pharmacist and murmur, 'Madame Lemonnier's medicine, please…' The little puff of warm air stolen at the pharmacy would quickly be driven from under her coat by the icy blast of the wastelands.
When Albertine appeared at the top of the steps the cabdriver raised his eyebrows and got up from his seat. He was not expecting this. The
The door opened, and in its twisted frame there appeared a woman. She wore a long, extremely elegantly cut dress, such as the cabdriver had only seen on the fine ladies coming out of the theater in the evening right at the center of Boyarsk. Her hair was gathered up in a chignon; it was crowned with a large hat. The springlike wind fluttered the veil that was thrown back on the broad, gracefully turned-up brim.
'We are going to the station!' she cried, further astonishing the taxi driver still more with the vibrant and very foreign resonance of her voice.
'To the station,' repeated the little girl, who had just now hailed him in the street. She, on the other hand, spoke very good Russian, with a slight Siberian accent…
Charlotte knew that Albertine's emergence at the top of the steps had been preceded by a long and painful battle, interrupted by several relapses – like the struggle of that man, battling in a black hole in the midst of the ice, which Charlotte had seen one day in spring, as she crossed the bridge. He clung to a long branch that was being pushed toward him and crawled up the slippery slope of the riverbank, sprawled flat on his stomach on the icy surface, progressing centimeter by centimeter, already stretching out his red hand, as he touched those of his rescuers. Suddenly, incomprehensively, his body shuddered, started to slip, and fell back once more into the black water. The current dragged him a little farther. Everything had to begin again… Yes,