Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky

Author:Irene Nemirovsky [Némirovsky, Irène]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37071-6
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2007-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

1

She nodded. ‘So we say good-bye, Yourotchka … Take good care of yourself, my darling boy,’ she said, as she had so often in the past.

How quickly time passed … When he was a child, leaving for school in Moscow in the autumn, he would come to say good-bye to her like this, in the very same room. That had been ten, twelve years ago.

She looked at his officer’s uniform almost with surprise, a kind of sorrowful pride.

‘Ah, Yourotchka, my boy, it seems like it was just yesterday.’

She fell silent, gesturing wearily. She had been with the Karine family for fifty-one years. She was the nanny to Nicolas Alexandrovitch, Youri’s father; after him, she had brought up his brothers and sisters, his children. She still remembered Alexandre Kirilovitch, killed in 1877 at thirty-nine in the war with Turkey. And now it was the children’s turn: Cyrille, Youri, it was their turn to go off to war …

She sighed, making the sign of the cross over Youri.

‘Go, and may God protect you, my darling boy.’

‘Of course, my dear.’

He smiled, a resigned, mocking look on his face. He had the heavy, youthful features of a serf. He didn’t look like the other Karines. He took the old woman’s small hands in his own; they were as hard as bark, almost black. When he started to raise them to his lips, she blushed and quickly pulled them away.

‘Are you mad? You don’t think I’m some beautiful young lady, do you? Go on now, Yourotchka, go downstairs … They’re still dancing down there.’

‘Good-bye, Nianiouchka, Tatiana Ivanovna,’ he said, sounding a bit lazy and slightly ironic. ‘Good-bye. I’ll bring you back a silk shawl from Berlin, though I’d be surprised if I ended up there; but, in the meantime, I’ll send you some nice fabric from Moscow as a New Year’s present.’

She forced herself to smile, pinching her lips even more; they had remained delicate, but were now tighter and pulled inwards, as if sucked into her mouth by her ageing jaw. She was seventy years old, very small and fragile-looking, with a smiling, lively face; her eyes were still piercing at times, and at others, calm and weary. She shook her head.

‘You make many promises, and your brother’s just the same. But you’ll forget us once you’re gone. Well, may it be God’s will that it all ends soon, and that you’ll both come back home. Do you think this wretched war will soon be over?’

‘Definitely. It will end quickly and badly.’

‘You mustn’t joke like that,’ she said crossly. ‘Everything is in the hands of God.’

She walked away, kneeling down in front of the open trunk.

‘You can tell Platochka and Piotre to come up and take whatever they want. Everything is ready. The fur coats are on the bottom with the tartan rugs. When are you leaving? It’s midnight.’

‘We’ll be all right as long as we get to Moscow by morning. The train leaves tomorrow at eleven o’clock.’

She sighed, shaking her head in that familiar way.

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