David Golder, the Ball, Snow in Autumn, the Courilof Affair

by Irene Nemirovsky

  Tubingen shook his head.

  “I’m seventy-two years old,” he said. “In twenty or twenty-five years’ time, when all the Teisk oil wells start producing, I’ll have been dead a very long time. I think about that sometimes… when I’m signing a ninety-nine-year lease! By then, it won’t just be me, but my son and my grandsons and their children who will all be in the hands of the Lord. But there will always be a Tubingen. And that’s why I keep going.”

  “But I don’t have anyone,” said Golder, “so, what’s the use?”

  “You have children, like I do.”

  “I have no one,” Golder repeated, angrily.

  Tubingen closed his eyes. “There would still be something that you’d created.”

  He slowly opened his eyes and appeared to look straight through Golder.

  “Something,” he repeated eagerly in the deep voice of a man who is revealing the secret thing most dear to his heart, “something that you’d built, that was lasting…”

  “And what is it that’s lasting for me? Money? Oh, it’s not worth the trouble … unless you could take it with you …”

  “The Lordgiveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” Tubingen recited quietly, with the droning intonation of a puritan brought up on the Scriptures since childhood. “That’s the law. There’s nothing you can do.”

  Golder sighed deeply.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “IT’S ME,” SAID Joyce. She came so close that she was nearly touching him, but he didn’t move.

  “Anyone would think you didn’t recognise me.”

  Then she cried out “Dad!” as she had in the past.

  Only then did he shudder and close his eyes, as if blinded by a dazzling light. He stretched out his hand so weakly that it barely touched hers before it dropped down on to his knee; still he said nothing.

  She pulled a footstool up to his armchair, sat down, and took off her hat, vigorously shaking her head in the way that was so familiar to him… Then she waited, silently.

  “You’ve changed,” he whispered, in spite of himself.

  “Yes,” she said with a bitter laugh.

  She was taller and thinner, with an indefinable look of weariness, distress, and resignation.

  She was wearing a magnificent sable coat. She threw it down on the floor behind her, revealing her neck and, in place of the pearls Golder had given her, an emerald necklace, as green as grass, its stones so pure and enormous that Golder stared at it for a moment, speechless with disbelief. Finally, he laughed harshly.

  “Ah, yes, I see now… You’ve sorted yourself out too … So why have you come then? I don’t understand …”

  “It’s a gift from my fiance,” she said quietly, with no emotion. “I have to get married soon.”

  “Ah … Congratulations,” he added, with difficulty.

  She didn’t reply.

  He thought for a moment, wiped his forehead several times, then sighed, “Well then, I wish you …” He hesitated. “So he’s rich, is he? You should be happy …”

  “Happy!” She let out a cry of despair and turned towards him. “Happy? Do you know who I’m going to marry?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Old Fischl,” she shouted, “that’s who!”

  “Fischl!”

  “Yes, Fischl! What did you think I would do? I have no money now, do I? My mother gives me nothing, not a penny. You know her, she’d rather see me starve to death than give me any money, wouldn’t she? So, what do you expect? It’s lucky he wants to marry me … Otherwise I would have just had to sleep with him, wouldn’t I? Although that might have been better, easier at least, one night with him from time to time … but that’s not what he wants, you see? The horrible old pig wants to get his money’s worth!” Her voice suddenly quivered with hatred. “Oh, I’d like to … ” She stopped, ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it with all her might with a look of despair.

  “I’d like to kill him,” she said slowly.

  Golder managed to laugh.

  “But why? It’s a very good idea, it’s wonderful! Fischl… He’s rich, you know, when he’s not in prison, and you’ll cheat on him with your young man … what was his name … your little gigolo? And you’ll be very happy. Come on! This was how you were meant to end up, you little slut, it was written all over your face … Still… still, it’s not what I used to dream of for you, Joyce…”

  His face grew even paler. “Why should it matter to me, dear Lord?” he thought frantically. “Why should it matter to me? Let her sleep with whomever she likes, let her go wherever she pleases…”

  But his proud heart was bleeding, as it had in the past.

  “My daughter…” (in spite of everything, everyone thought she was Golder’s daughter) “and Fischl!”

  “I’m so unhappy, if you only knew …”

  “You want too much, my girl. Money, love, you have to choose … But you’ve made your choice, haven’t you?” He winced in pain. “No one’s forcing you, are they? So, why are you whining? It’s what you want.”

  “Oh, this is all your fault, all of it! It’s all because of you! How am I supposed to live with no money? I’ve tried, I swear to you I’ve tried… If you could have seen me last winter… You remember how cold it was? Just like it always is, right? And there I was walking around in my little grey autumn coat… the last thing I bought for myself before you left. Wasn’t I a pretty sight! But I can’t, I just can’t doit, I’m not cut out for it, I’m telling you! It’s not my fault! Then I got into debt, had all sorts of financial troubles… So, to put an end to them, I did what I had to do, didn’t I? If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. But Alec, Alec! You say I’ll cheat on Fischl. Of course I will! But if you think he’s going to make it easy for me, you’re very wrong. Oh, you don’t know him! Once he’s paid for something, he watches over it, you know, he doesn’t let it out of his sight. He’s a dirty … a dirty old man! Oh, Ijustwanttodie, I’m so miserable, I’m so alone. I’m suffering, Dad. Help me. You’re all I have!”

  She clasped his hands and wrung them in despair.

  “Speak to me!” she shouted. “Say something! Otherwise I’m going to walk out of here and kill myself. Remember Marcus? They say he killed himself because of you… Well, you’ll have my death on your conscience too, do you hear me?”

  Her shrill, childlike voice echoed eerily in the empty rooms.

  Golder clenched his teeth.

  “So you think you can frighten me, do you? Don’t think I’m a fool! And besides, I haven’t got any more money. Just leave me alone. You mean nothing to me. You know very well… You’ve always known… You’re not my daughter… You’re … You’re Hoyos’s daughter and you know it! Well, go and see him. Let him protect you, let him look after you, let him work to support you. It’s his turn now. As for me, well, I’ve done quite enough for you, you’re no longer my problem. Go away, you mean nothing to me any more. Just get out!”

  “Hoyos? Are you sure? Oh, Dad! If you only knew! Alec and I meet at his place … and we… with him right there …” She hid her face in her hands. He could see tears running through her fingers.

  “Dad, you’re all I have! I have no one else in the world!” she repeated, in despair. “I couldn’t care less that you’re not my father, you have to believe me… You’re all I have! Help me, I’m begging you. I want so much to be happy. I’m young, I want to live, I want… I want to be happy!”

  “You’re not the only one, my poor darling… Leave me now, leave me…”

  He made a vague gesture with his hand that simultaneously pushed her away and drew her closer. Then he gave a sudden shudder and allowed his fingers to stroke her neck, her bowed head, her short, golden, sweet-smelling hair… Oh, he had missed touching her so much, missed feeling beneath his hand that blossoming, urgent spark of life, as in the past… and…

  “Oh, Joyce!” he whispered, his heart breaking. “Why did you come, Joyce? I was at peace
…”

  “My God, where else could I go?” She was nervously wringing her hands. “Oh, if you would… if only you would …”

  Golder shrugged his shoulders. “What? You want me to give you Alec for life, buy him for you, like I used to buy you toys and jewellery? Is that it? But I can’t do it now. It’s too expensive. Did your mother tell you I still had money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at how I live. I barely have enough to see me through until I die. But it would only last you a year.”

  “But why don’t you do what you did before?” she begged desperately. “Get back into business, make money? It’s so easy…”

  “Really! Is that what you think?”

  Once again, with a kind of fearful tenderness, he touched her fine golden hair. “Poor little Joyce…”

  “It’s funny,” he thought, painfully. “I know exactly what will happen. In two months’ time, she’ll have had enough of sleeping with her Alec … or whoever else it is… and that will be that… But Fischl! Oh, if it were only someone else … anyone else! But Fischl!” He was filled with hatred. “The bastard will talk about ‘Golder’s daughter, whom I married even though she had nothing… nothing but the clothes on her back!’”

  He leaned forward abruptly, took Joyce’s face in both hands and raised it up, digging his old, hard nails into her delicate skin with a kind of urgency. “You… you… If you didn’t need me, you’d have left me here to die all alone, wouldn’t you? Well, wouldn’t you?”

  “Would you have sent for me?” she whispered.

  She smiled. He looked helplessly at her tear-filled eyes and her beautiful, full red lips that opened slowly, like a flower.

  “My little girl,” he thought. “Perhaps, after all, she is mine, who knows? And anyway, what does it matter, for God’s sake, what difference does it make?”

  “You really know how to get what you want from your old man, eh, Joy?” he whispered passionately. “Your tears… and the idea ofthat pig being able to buy something that was mine, right? Right?” he repeated wildly, with a mixture of hatred and savage tenderness. “So then, you want me to try? You want me to make you some more money before I die? Are you prepared to wait a year? A year from now, you’ll be richer than your mother everwas.”

  He let her go and stood up. He could feel the heat and energy of life coursing through his old, weary body once more—all the strength and passion he had felt in the past.

  “Tell Fischl he can go to hell,” he continued. His voice had become precise, matter-of-fact. “And if you weren’t a complete fool, you’d send your Alec packing as well. No? If you let him spend all your money, what will you do after I’m gone? You don’t care, is that it? You think you’ll always be able to fall back on Fischl? Oh, I’m nothing but an old fool,” he growled. He took Joyce by the chin, gripping it so tightly that she winced in pain. “You will do me the honour of signing the marriage contract I will have drawn up for you, and no questions asked. I’m not going to kill myself for your little gigolo. Understood? Do you want some money now?”

  She nodded without replying. He let go of her, opened a drawer.

  “Listen to me, Joy … Tomorrow you will go and see Seton, my lawyer. I’ll instruct him to send you a hundred and fifty pounds every month…”

  He quickly scribbled some figures in the margin of a newspaper that was lying on the table.

  “That’s just about what I used to give you. A bit less. But you’ll have to make do with it for a while longer, my child, because it’s all that I have left. Later on, after I get back, you can get married.”

  “But where are you going?”

  He shrugged his shoulders angrily.

  “Do you really care?”

  He put his hand on her neck. “Joyce … If I die while I’m away, Seton will take care of everything to protect your interests. All you have to do is listen to him. Sign whatever he tells you to sign. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  He took a deep breath. “So … that’s it then…”

  “Daddy, darling…”

  She had slipped on to his lap, buried her head in his shoulder, closed her eyes.

  He looked at her with a faint smile—a mere quiver of the lips that he quickly repressed. “How loving people are when they’re poor, eh? This is the first time I’ve seen you like this, my child…”

  “And the last…” he thought, but he said nothing. He was happy simply to stroke her eyelids and neck. He did so for a long while, as if he were sculpting her features so he could remember them for a very long time to come.

  “BOTH PARTIES AGREE to conclude the agreement regarding concessions within thirty days of the signature of this contract…”

  The ten men sitting around the table all looked at Golder.

  “Yes, go on,” he murmured.

  “In accordance with the following conditions …”

  Golder fanned his face nervously with his hand in an attempt to dispel the cloud of smoke that threatened to choke him. The room was so thick with it that, from time to time, he could barely see the man opposite him who was reading: his pale, angular face and his black hole of a mouth became a mere patch of colour in the fog.

  A strong odour of leather, sweat, and Russian tobacco hung in the air.

  Since the night before, these ten men had not managed to agree on the final wording of the contract. And before that, their negotiations had lasted eighteen weeks.

  He turned his wrist to check the time, but his watch had stopped. He glanced at the window. Through the dirty glass, he could see the sun rising over Moscow. It was a very beautiful August morning, yet already it held the icy, transparent purity of the first dawns of autumn.

  “The Soviet government shall grant the Tubingen Petroleum Company a concession of up to fifty per cent of the oilfields located between the Teisk region and the area known as the Aroundgis, as described in the memorandum presented by the Tubingen Petroleum Company’s representative, dated 2 December 1925. Each oilfield included in this concession shall be rectangular in shape, no larger than one hundred acres, and shall not be adjoining…”

  Golder interrupted.

  “Would you please read that last item again for me?” he asked, his lips closing tightly.

  “Each oilfield.

  “So there it is,” thought Golder in frustration. “No mention of that before … They wait until the very last minute to sneak in their dirty little ambiguous clauses that don’t seem to mean anything precise, just to have an excuse to break the agreement later on, after we’ve advanced them the money for the initial expenses. I heard they did the same thing to Amrum…”

  He remembered having read a copy of the Amrum contract, the one he’d found amongst Marcus’s papers. Work was supposed to begin on a certain date. They had unofficially promised Amrum’s representative that the date could be extended—then they claimed the contract had been broken. It had cost Amrum millions. “Bunch of pigs,” he muttered.

  He banged his fist down on the table angrily.

  “You will cross that out right now!”

  “No,” someone shouted.

  “Then I’m not signing.”

  “Oh, but my dear David Issakitch …” one of the men cried.

  His warm, lyrical Russian accent and his soothing, considerate Slavonic expressions jarred strangely with the severe, narrow eyes set in his yellow face, and their intent, cruel stare.

  “What do you mean, my dear friend?” he said, stretching out his arms as if he wanted to hug Golder. “Goloubtchik…you know very well that this clause doesn’t mean anything significant. It is only there to appease the legitimate concerns of the proletariat who would not look favourably on having a part of Soviet territory pass into the hands of capitalists without some assurances…”

  Golder brushed him away.

  “Enough! What next! And what about Amrum, eh? In any case, I am not entitled to sign any clause that has not been read and approved by the company. Have I made
myself clear, Simon Alexeevitch?”

  Simon Alexeevitch closed his file. “Perfectly clear,” he said, in a different tone of voice. “We’ll wait then so the company has time to consider it and either accept or reject it.”

  “So that’s it… ” thought Golder. “They want to drag it out some more … Perhaps Amrum …”

  He flung his chair aside and stood up. “There will be no more delays, do you understand? No more delays! This contract will be signed right now or not at all! You’d better be careful! It’s yes or no, but right now! I refuse to spend even one extra hour in Moscow, let there be no misunderstandings! Come on, Valleys,” he said, turning towards the secretary of the Tubingen Company, who hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours and was looking at him in a kind of despair. Were they going to have to start all over again, my God, over something so insignificant? These endless negotiations, the shouting, Golder with his strangled, terrifying voice that at times seemed like nothing more than a kind of inarticulate babbling, like the sound of blood catching in your throat…

  “How can he shout like that?” thought Valleys with an instinctive feeling of terror. “And the rest of them as well?”

  They were now all huddled together at one end of the room, shouting wildly. Valleys could make out only certain words— “the interests of the proletariat,” ” the tyranny and exploitation of the capitalists”—which they hurled at each other in rapid fire as if they were punching each other in the face.

  Golder, red with fury, was frantically hammering the table with his hand, sending papers flying in all directions. Every time he shouted, Valleys thought the old man’s heart would explode.

  “Valleys! For God’s sake!”

  Valleys shuddered and jumped to his feet.

  Golder stormed past him, followed by the others who were screaming and waving their arms about. Valleys couldn’t understand a word of it. He followed Golder as if he were in some kind of nightmare. They were already going down the stairs when a member of the commission, the only one who hadn’t moved, got up and went over to Golder. He had a strange, almost Oriental face that was square and flat, and swarthy skin, like dried-out earth. He was a former convict. His nose was horribly scarred.