The Fires of Autumn

by Irene Nemirovsky

  Reading those lines, Yves had wanted to cry over his father as if he had died. And yet, he had not died. His father had come back and had begun to live his life with such cynicism, such bitterness!

  ‘All in all,’ Yves thought, ‘if anyone asked me what I think of him, I would have to say: “He is part of an evil set that out of spinelessness, blindness or deliberate treason is causing the downfall of France.” And since he belongs to those people, since he deals with them, shares their profits and their pleasures, does that make him … a dishonest man? Oh, no, that’s terrible, I couldn’t say that! And yet … That Détang, that Bernheimer … those women … And the worst part of all this is that other people are almost ashamed to judge them from a moral point of view, because they have transformed morality into something grotesque, childish, which only deserves to be ridiculed. If I said to my father: “It’s wrong to profit from a man like Détang! It’s wrong to increase unemployment in our country by buying things from abroad that we could manufacture here! It’s wrong to speculate on the devaluation of the franc, like Bernheimer is doing. It’s wrong to avoid paying taxes by sending your money outside France as you’ve bragged about doing in front of me …” What would he say then? He’d just shrug his shoulders. What a terrible generation they are! Why are they afraid? It’s clear they are afraid, and of everything. They spend the whole time fearing: fearing for their lives, and for their money. Why should those men, who at the age of twenty willingly risked their lives for nothing, now sell their souls for banknotes?’

  He walked through the snow in no particular direction, lost in thought. A bitter wind had risen up that whipped the back of his neck and behind his ears. It felt good, that sharp wind biting at his skin. He was content far away from everyone else. He had always been rather anti-social. As a child, he had dreamt of being like the sailing explorer Alain Gerbault, dreamt of escaping Europe (what appealed to him was not the peace of a desert island, but steering a boat on the high seas, the storms and the danger). Yes, he was happy when he was alone. Everything was calm. He had a perspective on people and things that was clear, tranquil, objective and implacable. His father … he had wanted to stay alive. He would never allow himself to give up his one chance at life. He had never given himself entirely to anything; he had held back a part of himself, remaining defiant, reticent, egotistical – in war, in peace, in love.

  ‘I won’t be like him,’ thought Yves, ‘not me. Anyone who wants to save his own life ends up losing it. I will offer up my life. I will disregard it completely. I will know how to sacrifice myself if need be, yes, I will.’

  A strange, prophetic sadness took hold of him.

  ‘They are the ones who are offering us up to be sacrificed,’ he thought. ‘They say there will be a war, that it is inevitable and imminent. They are the ones who have laid the ground for it. They claim they fear it. I don’t know, perhaps that’s true, but, at certain times, they seem to welcome it. Or maybe they are fascinated by it? Perhaps they have now gone too far to step back and they feel we’re on the brink of an abyss? But what is certain is that it will be the young men who are first to fall into that abyss.’

  He climbed the mountain faster and faster. He stopped, out of breath. He had been walking for a long time. The short winter’s day was ending. The setting sun was red.

  ‘That’s a sign there’ll be a wind coming up,’ said a farmer who was passing.

  There was an inn nearby where Yves ordered some milk and toast. The room was empty but for a dog and her six little puppies asleep on a bundle of hay. When Yves went to stroke them, she bared her teeth at first, then, after studying him, she left Yves with her little ones. He picked up one of the puppies, slipped it under his jacket and went outside. It was nearly dark. In certain places, the snow glistened. Yves leant over and tried to see Megève, but a thick fog hid the town. He could not even make out the waterfalls that fell down the mountain, cracking the ice; he could tell they were there only by the smell of cold underground places and their deep, solemn sound. Yves stood motionless for a very long time, stroking the warm fur of the little dog that sighed and whimpered softly. Yves was thinking of many things, some clear and sharp, others as confusing as in a dream. In the life of every man worthy of the name, there is a moment when he takes sides, when he decides once and for all whether he is for or against a certain way of life.

  ‘What I need is solitude,’ thought Yves, ‘and for things to be clean and clear … Something that resembles this mountain, something austere, harsh and strong. I want to live far away from cities, far away from people. If I were a believer, I’d become a priest.’

  He walked a few steps in the snow and breathed in the pure, sweet-smelling mountain air.

  ‘I’ll become a pilot,’ he thought. ‘I know very well what my father would say … that I’m naïve, that there are as many shady deals and schemes in that profession as in any other. I know that … But the effort and danger it demands redeems everything. And at least being a pilot is work that requires you to offer yourself up entirely. What will Mama say?’ he continued thinking. ‘Well, little dog,’ he whispered, putting him down on the ground; the puppy immediately rushed away, tail in the wind. ‘What will she say? And what would he have said … the man who so wished to be my father, I’m sure of that, the man who died, hoping, perhaps, that he had left behind a son? Yes, what would Martial Brun have said? And what will my real father say, and not the father of my dreams?’

  He could hear him now:

  ‘But think about it, my boy. It’s all very well and good, but … there’s not much in it for you, you know? It’s true that you get women.’

  Women! Making money and making love! A good steak and someone’s bed … He shook his head angrily and went back to the inn. He had a bit of cash with him; he would spend the night in a sparse, bright little room. He sent a young lad to Megève with a letter for his father:

  ‘Please forgive me,’ he wrote, ‘for not coming back tonight, but I can’t stand the people we met and you’re part of their world. Forgive me. I don’t wish to be harsh or insolent. But I know you won’t be angry, you’ll simply make fun of me. I have my return ticket with me. I’m going back to Paris alone tomorrow. Once again, forgive me, Papa.

  ‘With love,

  ‘Yves’

  3

  Bernard learned of Bernheimer’s death over the phone. It was a stifling hot night in August. He had spent the night at the Détangs’ place, in their house at Fontainebleau. That summer of 1939, no one left Paris. The Détangs gave a large dinner party. As soon as soup was served, the word ‘war’ was uttered by one of the guests.

  ‘No! That’s enough!’ cried Renée Détang. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! It’s not true; don’t you know that another war is impossible? My husband has seen the President of the Scandinavian Bank. It seems that war isn’t possible, because the Germans don’t have enough railway trucks. Didn’t you know that? It’s the latest news, you see. And I beg of you, please let’s talk of other things!’

  The dinner party had been very lively. Détang was in particularly good form; the passing years did not seem to affect him. He was fatter and had a healthier complexion than ever. Bernard had known him for so long that he really no longer saw him. But that evening, he was struck by one of his features that he had either never noticed or had forgotten: Détang’s eyes. They were shining and completely blank. They reminded him of the sparkling surface of a mirror; they reflected the outside world, they were happy when everything around him was joyful, full of melancholy when others were sad, but on their own, they expressed nothing. He walked over to Bernard and put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Tell me, are you coming away with us? We’re going to Cannes a week from Monday. From there, we’ll take a little trip to London.’

  Then he lowered his voice to make a remark about a woman who was walking past. Whenever he talked about women, the blood flowed up his neck and behind his ears in a slow wave of deep crimson.


  ‘To tell the truth, women are the only thing I really like, and I like it more and more,’ he said in a different voice, a low, hoarse voice. He quickly walked away from Bernard.

  The same man, two hours later, woke Bernard to tell him that Bernheimer had died. The Dutch financier had gambled on a drop in the value of the florin and had lost. The florin had not been devalued. Bernheimer lost everything and had just died. In his own debacle, he had dragged down many business deals that had seemed to be solid and profitable, including one that involved Bernard Jacquelain who, a week earlier, had loaned him every penny he had. As for Détang, he had blindly bet everything on Bernheimer:

  ‘I’m done for,’ he said to Bernard. ‘That will teach me put all my eggs in one basket. Someone offered me the chance to bet on the Dutch florin increasing in value. I refused. I trusted that foreign bastard. Trusting people will be the death of me. I should have had him deported. Are you listening to me, Bernard?’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bernard replied after a moment’s silence.

  ‘Have you been hit hard, too? You as well?’

  ‘I’m going to lose everything.’

  ‘Ah, my dear boy, my first thought was to blow my brains out. Then I told myself that there would be plenty of time for that later.’

  ‘Have you known for a long time?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘Since five o’clock this afternoon.’

  He hung up. Bernard let out a deep sigh and got out of bed. He felt the peculiar sensation of disbelief that follows the announcement of a disaster. ‘Come on now! Could something like this really happen to me? To me? It simply isn’t possible!’

  Mankind can only easily get used to happiness and success. When it comes to failure, human nature puts up insurmountable barriers of hope. The sense of despair has to remove those barriers one by one, and only then does despair penetrate to the heart of man who gradually recognises the enemy, calls it by name, and is horrified.

  ‘I just have to start all over again,’ Bernard had thought. ‘These things happen. I’ll get a loan.’

  Calmly, thinking clearly, at first, then more feverishly, then with desperate rage, he had tried to imagine anyone he knew who could help him. The bank in London, the Americans, that important French company. Come on, come on! He wasn’t just anybody! He was Bernard Jacquelain! But … in truth … Who was Bernard Jacquelain? Had he brought anything new, anything of value to the world? Something of genius? A considerable body of work, a new invention of any kind? No. When he thought about it carefully, he had built his fortune with telephone calls, conversations, lunches, a kind of savoir-faire, by knowing how to deal with people, the ability to talk about anything, to have the latest facts about everything, an ability that was to real work what smoke was to a flame. Ninety-nine per cent of the careers in Paris that had been established in the past twenty-five years were just like his. Bernard let out a low groan. Suddenly, the realisation of the disaster rushed through him in a wave, carrying in its wake all his fragile hopes. He was finished. The bank in London, the one in New York, the French company whose President he knew so very well, all of them would drop him, because it was in no one’s interest to save him. Quite the contrary. There had been too many financial scandals in France in the past ten years; everyone would be afraid, fearing to become compromised by helping one of Bernheimer’s old friends … He was abandoned, ruined. He would fight. He would try to get extensions for his debts, loans. In vain! What was more, he had been happy. And that was unforgivable. Now they would make him pay for his good luck. There would not be enough mud in all of France to throw at him, to prevent him from getting back on his feet again. Who was on his side? Not his family, not a powerful collective. Connections. That wasn’t very much. Connections were all powerful in times of success, but weakest when it came to failure. There were simply a flimsy kind of support that crumbles as soon as you put out a hand to grab on to it, he knew that. A crash, a collapse. No way out. Détang, without a doubt, was dying of fear that thanks to the scandal, everyone would uncover his shady deals from the past, like the aeroplane parts, for example (how had that actually panned out? He knew he had earned his commission, but for the rest … Détang had mentioned in passing that in the end he had ‘made the Air Minister responsible for it all, but not without a great deal of difficulty, and he had had to spend more than twenty per cent in backhanders’). If that old deal ever surfaced, people would take advantage of it to bring him down – Bernard, who had played only a minor role.

  For the first time, a deep sense of terror rushed through him. Perhaps what he had done, which was so commonplace in certain circles, actually deserved the punishment that was raining down on him? But he immediately banished that thought. What a joke … He had not conned anyone. He had not betrayed anyone or stolen anything. From a legal point of view, no one could be blamed for the crash itself. He had been thrown by chance among a group of men who meted out honours and wealth to each other. Almost in spite of himself, he had been pushed to the forefront. He would have been mad not to behave like the others. Why should he have refused? Why? In the name of what? Everyone was involved in some shady business, everyone lied, everyone schemed. The only difference was that some of them were hypocrites and others were not. He had been smug and open about the scandals; he had enjoyed them; he had wallowed in the mud with joyful, cynical delight. The next generation would make him pay dearly (he was thinking of Yves) not for the sin itself but for the brazenness of the sin. Perhaps … he didn’t know … He felt very weary. He opened the window and took several deep breaths of warm air that seemed to stick to the back of his throat like tar. He thought about death. He was desperate. Renée? She had stopped caring about him a long time ago. And what about him? He had no illusions. It was so strange; he had always believed he was the only man in the entire world who had no illusions. He now realised that, on the contrary, no one had ever so carefully constructed such a wall of smoke and mirrors and lies around himself. He had believed that he was rich, powerful, loved. He discovered he was poor, weak and alone. Renée, like Détang, would drop him. He could sense it; he was sure of it. One day, Détang had told him: ‘In life, like in a shipwreck, you have to cut off the hands of anyone who wants to hold on to your raft. Alone, you can float. If you waste time trying to save others, you’re finished!’

  He waited impatiently until daytime to go to the Détangs’ house. They did not let him in. He was told that Détang had gone out. Renée, too, was nowhere in sight. He rushed around until nightfall. He warned all his friends. He telephoned London and New York. He desperately tried to save himself; he could, perhaps, have got some support from Détang by threatening him with exposure, with gossip, frightening him, but he could not bring himself to do that. It was too low, too cowardly. A surge of morality put an end to that temptation: ‘Ah, no, not that, not that! That would be the final blow! I couldn’t look Yves in the eye after doing something like that.’ Yves …‘And what about Thérèse …?’ he said very softly. He found himself out in the street. He fell down on a bench, looking so pale that a passer-by walked over to him and asked if he were ill. He said no, thanked him, stood up and continued walking. He kept going, blindly roaming the streets of Paris. He found himself in his old neighbourhood. He only became aware of it when he was on the street where he used to live, that dingy street with its lace curtains at the windows, cats wailing in the gutters, the sound of the bells of Saint-Sulpice and the fountains in front of the church.

  Like a sleepwalker, he crossed the road. From his key ring, he found the smallest one, it was flat and worn, the key he had not used for three years. He called out a name to the concierge, climbed up the three flights of stairs and opened a door. He was home.

  4

  Father and son left together the day war was declared, Bernard for the Lorraine region, Yves for an Air Force camp in Beauce. Just as you go into a house where you used to live, feel your way past the familiar furniture, so the women of France, without feeling shock or making
any apparent effort, fell back into the way they behaved during that other war. They recalled, for example, that you must not go with your husband to the station when he is about to leave, that the final kiss must be given at home, far from the crowds, in a dimly lit room; they remembered that the soldier would walk away without looking back and that they must not shed any tears, as if they knew, instinctively, that they needed to save their tears for the future.

  In the hall, Thérèse and Madame Jacquelain (very old now, her face pale and wrinkled, still very petite with innocent, misty blue eyes) kissed the men who were about to leave. Thérèse’s two daughters, aged six and four and a half, hopped about, understanding nothing, and wanted to laugh, though they did not know why. At first, Geneviève, the elder girl, had seemed surprised and saddened by their departure. She had blond hair and grey eyes and looked like Bernard, while the younger one had her mother’s smooth, soft skin and dark eyes. Geneviève had asked in a quiet, worried voice when Papa and Yves would be coming home. ‘Soon,’ they said. That completely reassured her and she began to laugh with her sister. Of the two men, it was Bernard who was leaving for the front, Bernard who would be in real danger, but ‘there’s the Maginot Line’, thought Thérèse. Yves would be safe for three months. After that … the danger of flying, battles in the air, bombs … God! What a nightmare! Everything felt like a sinister, hazy dream: her husband had come back to her two weeks ago. By what miracle? In response to her fervent prayers? Only God knew why. He had come home – the moment she had been waiting for, for three years, the moment she had lived for, the moment she had imagined more than a thousand times: the sound of the key in the lock, a hesitant voice: ‘Thérèse, are you there?…’, that tall masculine figure in the entrance hall and suddenly, he was by her side, his face changed through suffering … Yes, she had pictured all of that in her dreams before living it … And the night that had followed … in her arms, her husband, shaking with sobs, cruel, furious, sharp sobs, in which wounded pride and remorse were mixed with love, then his falling asleep, relaxed and trusting, and her own feeling of divine peace! How sad, how very sad – only two weeks and then the war! She had lost Bernard twice. As for Madame Jacquelain, what was horrible, inhuman about this war, she thought to herself, was that the past was returning in a way that only happens in dreams, or, perhaps, in the afterlife, the way you imagine hell. Every now and again, she got a bit confused; she turned towards her grandson and called him ‘Bernard’ in a loving voice.