David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008)

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “What’s wrong, my poor old dear?” he asked softly.

  She didn’t reply. What was the point?

  Every day, she looked at the calendar that told her it was the beginning of October, then stared at the rooftops for a long time, but still there was no snow. All she saw were dingy tiles, the rain, the withered autumn leaves, carried along by the wind.

  She was alone all day long now. Nicolas Alexandrovitch scoured the city for antiques or jewellery for their little shop; he managed to sell a few old things and buy some others.

  In the past, Nicolas Alexandrovitch owned a collection of precious porcelain china and ornate silver platters. Now, as he walked home along the Champs-Elysees at dusk, carrying a package under his arm, he would sometimes manage to forget that he had to work for his family, for himself. He walked quickly, breathing in the smells of Paris, watching the lights shining at dusk, almost happy, his heart sad yet peaceful.

  Loulou was working as a model in a fashion house. Ever so gradually, life took shape. They got home late, tired, returning home with a kind of excitement from the streets, from their work. It spilled over into discussions, laughter, for a while, but the solemn attitude of the silent old woman gradually wore them down. They would eat supper quickly, go to their rooms, and fall into a dreamless sleep, exhausted by their gruelling day.

  CHAPTER VIII

  OCTOBER CAME AND went, and the November rains began. From morning until night, they could hear the downpour pounding the cobblestones in the courtyard. In the apartment, the air was warm, heavy. When the heaters were switched off, at night, the humidity from outside seeped in through the grooves in the floors. The harsh wind howled behind the iron covers of the cold fireplace.

  For hours on end, Tatiana Ivanovna sat in the empty apartment, in front of the window, watching the rain fall. Its heavy drops flowed down the glass like a river of tears. In all the kitchens, above the identical little pantries with their washing lines nailed up between the walls, where the dust cloths were hung to dry, the servants exchanged pleasantries, or complained, in this language they spoke so quickly that she couldn’t understand a word. Around four o’clock, the children came home from school. She could hear the noise of pianos all being played at the same time; and, on each table, in the dining rooms, identical lamps were switched on. They pulled the curtains closed, and then she would hear only the sound of the rain and muffled noises from the street.

  How could they all live like this, shut up in these dark houses? When would the snows come?

  November passed, then the first weeks of December, barely any colder. There were heavy fogs, smoke coming out of the chimneys, the last dead leaves, crushed, carried along by the wind. Then Christmas. On 24 December, after a light meal, eaten quickly at one end of the table, the Karines left to celebrate Christmas Eve at the home of some friends. Tatiana Ivanovna helped them dress. When they said good-bye to her, she felt a spark of joy seeing them all dressed up, as in the past, Nicolas Alexandrovitch in a tuxedo. She smiled as she looked at Loulou in her white dress, her long hair in curls over her neck.

  “Go on, Lulitchka, you’ll meet your fiance tonight, God willing.”

  Loulou silently shrugged her shoulders, let herself be kissed without saying a word. They all left. Andre was spending the Christmas holidays in Paris. He was wearing the uniform from his school in Nice: a coat, short blue trousers, and cap; he looked taller and stronger. He had a quick, lively way of talking, the accent, gestures, and slang of a boy who’d been born and raised in France. That night he was going out in the evening with his parents for the first time. He was laughing, humming. Tatiana Ivanovna leaned out the window, watched him walk ahead, jumping over the puddles. The heavy doors of the courtyard slammed shut with a dull thud. Once again Tatiana Ivanovna was alone. She sighed. The wind, mild for the time of year, full of fine raindrops, blew against her face. She raised her head, looked blankly up at the sky. Between the rooftops she could barely make out the shadowy horizon; it was coloured an extraordinary red, as if burning with an internal fire. In the apartment building, gramophones were playing on the different floors, merging to form a discordant music.

  “At home,” Tatiana Ivanovna murmured, then fell silent. Why even think about it? That was over a long time ago … Everything was finished, dead.

  She closed the window, went back into the apartment. She raised her head, breathed in the air with great effort, an irritated, worried look on her face. These low ceilings were suffocating her. Karinova … The large house with its immense windows, where the light and air washed over the terraces, the sitting rooms, the entrance halls, where fifty musicians could fit comfortably when they held balls in the evenings. She recalled the Christmas when Cyrille and Youri had left… She could almost hear the waltz they’d played that night… Four years had passed… She could picture the columns shimmeringwith ice in the moonlight. “If Iweren’t so old,” she thought, “I’d be happy to make the journey back… But it wouldn’t be the same. No, no,” she muttered vaguely. “It wouldn’t be the same.” The snow… As soon as she saw the snow start to fall, she would be at peace … She would forget everything. She would go to bed and close her eyes, forever. “Will I live to see the snow?” she whispered.

  She automatically picked up the clothing from the chairs and started folding it. For some time now, she thought she could see a very even, fine sprinkling of dust that fell from the ceiling and settled everywhere. It had begun in autumn, when it got dark earlier but they lit the street-lamps later, to save on electricity. She brushed and shook the fabric endlessly; the dust flew off, but only fell back down again a bit further away, like a cloud of fine ash.

  She picked up the clothing, brushed it off, muttering, “What is this? What on earth is this?” with a painful, surprised look on her face.

  Suddenly she stopped, looking around her. Sometimes she didn’t understand why she was there, wandering through these narrow rooms. She placed her hands on her chest, sighed. The airwas heavy, warm, and, unusually, the heaters were on, because it was a holiday; they gave off a smell of fresh paint. She wanted to switch them off, but she had never understood how to work them. She turned the little handle for a while in vain, then stopped. Once again she opened the window. The apartment on the other side of the courtyard was lit up and cast a rectangular swathe of bright light into the room.

  “At home,” she thought, “at home, at this time of year…” The forest would be frozen. She closed her eyes, pictured in extraordinary detail the deep snow, the fires in the village, shimmering in the distance; and the river and the grounds, sparkling and hard, like steel.

  She stood motionless, leaning against the window-frame, pulling her shawl over her dishevelled hair, the way she always did. A fine, warm rain was falling; the bright raindrops, swept up in the sudden bursts of wind, wet her face. She shivered, pulled her old black shawl more tightly around her. Her ears were ringing; she felt as if a violent noise were beating through them, like a furious bell. Her head, her entire body, was aching.

  She left the sitting room, made her way to her little room at the end of the hallway, and prepared for bed.

  Before getting into bed, she knelt to say her prayers. She made the sign of the cross, then lowered her head to touch the wooden floor, as she did every night. But this evening her words were all confused; she stopped, stared at the little flame burning at the foot of the icon, almost in a trance.

  She got into bed, closed her eyes. She couldn’t fall asleep, so she just listened, in spite of herself, to the creaking furniture, the sound of the clock in the dining room, like a human sigh that announced the hour striking in the silence; and, above her, below her, the gramophones playing, this Christmas Eve. People were rushing up and down the stairs, crossing the courtyard, going out for the evening. She could hear people shouting constantly: “Open the door, please!” the muffled echo of the courtyard door opening then closing again, and footsteps disappearing into the empty street. Taxis sped by. A hoarse voi
ce called out to the concierge in the courtyard.

  Tatiana Ivanovna sighed and turned her heavy head over to the other side of the pillow. She heard the bells chime eleven o’clock, then midnight. She fell asleep several times, woke up again. Every time she dozed off, she dreamed of the house in Karinova, but the image kept fading, so she hurried to close her eyes again to try to recapture it. Each time it happened, some detail disappeared. Sometimes, the delicate yellow of the stone changed into the reddish colour of dried blood; or the house was solid, walled over, the windows gone. But still she heard the faint echo of the frozen branches on the pine trees, whipped by the wind, like the sound of shattered glass.

  Suddenly the dream changed. She saw herself standing in front of the open, empty house. It was in autumn, at the time of day when the servants lit the wood-burning stoves. She was standing downstairs, alone. In her dream, she saw the abandoned house, the bare rooms, just as she had left them, with the carpets rolled up against the walls. She went upstairs, and all the doors slammed in the wind, with a strange, groaning noise. She walked quickly, hurrying, as if she were afraid of being late for something. She saw all the enormous rooms, wide open, empty, with bits of wrapping paper and old newspapers scattered about the floor, swept up now and again, hovering in the wind.

  Finally she entered the nursery. It was bare like all the other rooms, even Andre’s bed was gone, and, in her dream, she felt a kind of astonishment: she remembered having rolled up his mattress and pushed it into a corner of the room herself. In front of the window, sitting on the floor, was Youri: in his soldier’s uniform, pale and thin, just as he had been that last day, playing with some old jacks, like he had as a child. She knew he was dead, but still she felt such extraordinary joy at seeing him that her aged, weary heart began to beat violently, almost painfully; its deep, muffled rhythm pounded against her chest. She could see herself running towards him, crossing the dusty wooden floor that creaked beneath her weight, as it had in the past, but just as she was about to reach out and touch him, she woke up. It was late. Day was breaking.

  CHAPTER IX

  SHE WOKE WITH a moan and lay there motionless, stretched out on her back, staring at the bright windows, as if in a trance. A thick, white fog filled the courtyard; to her tired eyes, it looked like snow, like the first snows of autumn, thick and blinding, covering everything in a kind of mournful light, a harsh white glare.

  She clasped her hands together. “The first snow…” she whispered.

  She looked at it for a long time, an expression of delight on her face that was both childlike and frightening, a little deranged. The apartment was silent. No one would be home yet, of course. She got out of bed and dressed without taking her eyes from the window, imagining the snow falling, ever faster, streaking the sky with a feathery trail. At one point, she thought she heard a door closing. Perhaps the Karines were already back and had gone to bed? But she wasn’t thinking about them. She imagined she could feel the snowflakes on her face, could taste their fire and ice. She took her coat, quickly tied her scarf around her head and fastened it under her chin with a pin. Automatically she felt around on the table, looking for the keys that she always took with her in Karinova, when she went out, her hand stretched out as if she were blind. She found nothing, but kept feeling around anxiously, forgetting exactly what she was looking for, impatiently sweeping away her spectacle case, the knitting she had just started, the picture of Youri as a child…

  She felt as if someone was waiting for her. A strange fever burned in her soul.

  She opened the wardrobe, leaving its door and the drawer open. A clothes hanger fell to the floor. She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders, as if she had no time to lose, and quickly left the room. She crossed the apartment and hurried silently down the stairs.

  Once outside, she stopped. The freezing fog covered the courtyard in a dense, white blanket that slowly rose from the ground, like smoke. Fine drops of rain stung her face, like the tips of snowflakes when they fall amidst a September rain, half-melted.

  Behind her, two men in tuxedos came out of the building and looked at her oddly. She followed them, slipping through the half-open door, which slammed shut behind her back with a dull thud.

  She was in the street, a dark, deserted street; a gas-lamp shone through the rain. The fog was clearing and a cold sharp drizzle had started to fall. The cobblestones and walls shimmered faintly. A man passed by, his soaked shoes leaking water; a dog rushed across the road, came up to the old woman, and sniffed her, then followed her, whimpering and moaning miserably. It stayed with her for a while, then wandered off.

  She kept walking, saw a square, other streets. A taxi drove past so close that it splattered mud on to her face. She didn’t seem to notice. She walked straight ahead, stumbling over the wet cobblestones. Now and again, she felt so utterly exhausted that her legs seemed to give way under the weight of her body and sink into the ground. She looked up, saw day breaking near the Seine, a patch ofwhite sky at the end of the street. To her eyes, it was a blanket of snow, just like in Soukharevo. She walked faster, dazzled by the fine, burning rain that stung her eyelids. The sound of church bells rang in her ears.

  Suddenly she had a moment of lucidity; she clearly saw the smoke and fog as it lifted; but then the moment passed. She started walking again, weary and anxious, her body bent over towards the ground. Finally she reached the quayside.

  The Seine was so high that it had overflowed its banks; the sun was rising, and the horizon was a pure, luminous white. The old woman walked over to the parapet and stared intently at the dazzling stretch of sky. Below her, a small staircase had been carved out of stone; she took hold of the hand-rail, clutched it tightly with her cold, shivering hand, and started down. Water flowed over the last few steps. She didn’t notice. “The river is frozen over,” she thought. “It must be frozen over at this time of year.”

  She thought that all she had to do was cross the river and on the other side would be Karinova. She could see the lights from its terraces shimmering through the snow.

  But when she reached the last step, the smell of the water finally hit her. She made a sudden movement of surprise and anger, stopped for a moment, then continued descending, despite the water that soaked through her shoes and weighed down her skirt. And it was only when she was waist-deep in the Seine that she came back to her senses. She felt freezing cold and tried to cry out, but had only enough time to make the sign of the cross before her hand fell back.

  She was dead.

  Her little body floated for a moment, like a bundle of rags, before disappearing from sight, swallowed up by the shadowy Seine.

  THE COURILOF AFFAIR

  PROLOGUE

  TWO MEN SAT down separately at the empty tables on the terrace of a cafe in Nice, attracted by the red flames of a small brazier.

  It was autumn, at dusk, on a day that felt cold for that part of the world. “It’s like the sky in Paris…” said a woman passing by, pointing to the yellowish clouds carried along by the wind. Within a few moments, it began to rain, enhancing the darkness of the deserted street where the lamps had not yet been lit; raindrops dripped down here and there through the soaked canvas awning stretched over the cafe.

  The man who had followed Leon M. on to the terrace had secretly watched him ever since he’d sat down, trying to remember who he was; both men leaned forward towards the warm stove at the same moment.

  From inside the cafe came the muddled sound of voices, people calling out; the crashing of billiard balls, trays banging down on the wooden tables, chess pieces being moved around the boards. Now and again, you could make out the hesitant, shrill fanfare of a small band, muffled by the other noise in the cafe.

  Leon M. looked up, pulled his grey wool scarf more tightly around his neck; the man sitting opposite him said quietly: “Marcel Legrand?”

  At the very same moment, the electric lights suddenly came on in the street, in the doorways, and outside the cafes. Surprise
d by the sudden brightness, Leon M. looked away for a moment.

  “Marcel Legrand?” the man repeated.

  There was a surge of electricity in the street-lights, no doubt, for they grew dimmer; the light flickered for a second, like the flame of a candle left outdoors; then it seemed to come back again, bathing Leon M.’s face, hunched shoulders, gaunt hands, and delicate wrists in a dazzling light.

  “Weren’t you in charge of the Courilof affair, in 1903?”

  “In 1903?” M. repeated slowly.

  He tilted his head to the side and whistled softly, with the weary, sarcastic look of a cautious old bird.

  The man sitting opposite him was sixty-five; his face looked grey and tired; his upper lip twitched with a nervous tic, causing his big white moustache, once blond, to jump now and again, revealing his pale mouth, his bitter, anxious frown. His lively eyes, piercing and suspicious, quickly lit up and then almost immediately looked away.

  “Sorry. I don’t recognise you,” M. finally said, shrugging his shoulders. “My memory isn’t very good these days …”

  “Do you remember the detective who used to be Courilof’s bodyguard? The one who ran after you one night, in the Caucasus?…”

  “The one who ran after me … unsuccessfully? I remember now,” said M.

  He gently rubbed his hands together; they were getting numb. He was about fifty years old, but he looked older and ill. He had a narrow chest, a dark, sarcastic expression, a beautiful but odd mouth, bad, broken teeth, greying locks of hair spilling over his forehead. His eyes, deeply set, shone with a dim flame.

  “Cigarette?” he murmured.

  “Do you live in Nice, Monsieur Legrand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Withdrawn from active service, if I may put it that way?”