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

by Irene Nemirovsky

  In Kiev, she lived in one large room on the top floor of a corner house; from her window, you could see both the market and the town square and, past the square, a long, deep road that ended at a charming gilded church. Afterwards, once we’d taken Kiev, I remembered that house: I had machine guns installed in it; when the people of Makhno came out of the church and filled the town square, pillaging and killing, we mowed them down.

  She gave me a passport that belonged to one of her brothers: it had been agreed that the name Marcel Legrand would be used only in St. Petersburg, to cover my tracks as thoroughly as possible.

  That very evening, I moved in with her. I was alone almost all day long. She was studying at the university, and when she got home at night she would make us something to eat, and we would talk; or rather, she would talk, going over and over the list of people to be assassinated.

  Heavy snow fell over the frozen town square: you could see the policemen going home in pairs. Kiev was a small provincial town then, peaceful and dismal. Never have I seen, anywhere else, such beautiful sunsets, mournful and dazzling. The sky on the western side suddenly turned blood-red and hazy with purplish smoke. Endless flocks of crows flew about until nightfall, deafening us with their cries, with the beating of their wings. From our windows, we could see the houses all lit up, peaceful silhouettes behind the window-panes, the flickering light of paraffin lamps set on the floors in the shops, giving off a smoky glow all around them.

  I saw no one but Fanny; according to the instructions I’d received, I was to meet no one else in the Party. Perhaps the leaders in Geneva were already beginning to suspect A. of being a traitor.

  Finally, I left Kiev with Fanny. We arrived in St. Petersburg the day before Easter.

  CHAPTER 6

  I WENT TO a boarding house she recommended to me; it was run by a Madame Schroder, a woman of German descent who had started out running a brothel that she later turned into a hotel with furnished rooms. She worked for both the revolutionaries and the police. Because of a kind of reciprocal tolerance, these types of places were the safest.

  Streams of prostitutes went there; they were unknowingly our free informers. In the evening, before going back to the Nevsky River or the cabarets, they met up at Schroder’s place; we’d put a pitcher of vodka or some tea on the table and they would give us, without even realising it, names and addresses better than any professional revolutionary could. They were kind creatures, sweet and totally penniless. They were reactionaries at heart, like most prostitutes usually are, and never suspected the role they were made to play by both sides. At least that was the case with most of them; certain amongst them knowingly betrayed others for money, out of jealousy or because they loved talking.

  The next day was Easter Sunday. The very night we arrived, we decided to go to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, where, according to Fanny’s informants, Courilof would be attending Mass. This way, I could see what the minister looked like in person, rather than from photos. Easter that year coincided with the commemoration of a saint whose name I have forgotten: for this reason, Courilof wouldn’t sit in the ministers’ chapel for Mass, as he ordinarily did.

  Fanny was going to point him out to me and would then disappear. She was suspected by the police: her name had been mixed up in some secret typography business. That was why the Party had refused to entrust her with carrying out the assassination. She was an extraordinarily intelligent and sharp woman, driven by a kind of nervous passion, a constant tension I have seen, to that level, only in women, a tension that made it possible for them to perform miracles of endurance and energy. Then, suddenly, they would collapse, and either kill themselves or cross over to the other side, selling us to our enemies. Many of them, however, died courageously.

  That same evening, Fanny had managed to get hold of some money and buy some second-hand peasant clothing so she could disguise herself. We took two large candles and koulitch cakes with us that could be blessed at church, and set off to take the longest route, so that Fanny could show me the ministerial palace where Courilof lived. St. Petersburg seemed extraordinarily beautiful to me. Easter had fallen very late that year; the nights were already light.

  You could clearly see the red palaces, the quaysides, the dark granite houses. I stopped in front of the ministry, stared for a long time at the columns, the wrought-iron balconies; the stonework was the same deep red of the state buildings, the colour of dried blood. High gates surrounded a garden that was still bare; through the naked branches, I could see a sandy courtyard, a wide staircase of white marble.

  We headed back to Saint Isaac’s. The streets were full of poor people, like us, who were holding candles and cakes wrapped in white cloth napkins. They were being sold from tables set up amidst the biting wind. Cars passed slowly by. We got to the town square, where the crowd waited. I saw members of the diplomatic corps go inside—ministers, important dignitaries, women—then we went in with the ordinary people, crossing ourselves as they did.

  Fanny made her way forward to a hidden corner of the church from where we could see the first pews. The scent of smoke from the incense was so strong that my head started pounding, and I felt as if I were looking through a haze at a crowd of people in evening dress, sparkling uniforms decorated with ribbons and stars. Their faces, in the candlelight, looked yellow, like the faces of corpses, their mouths surrounded by deep shadows. The clergymen, gleaming, chanted and swung their incense burners towards us.

  “Third from the row on the left, between two women,” said Fanny. “One woman has a bird of paradise on her hat, the other’s young, in a white dress.”

  I looked, and through the wafting incense, I could see a large man, heavy, whose hair and eyebrows were nearly white, with a square, unkempt beard and an expression that was callous, haughty, and stern. I studied him for a long time. He was as still as a stone. He raised his hand slowly to make the sign of the cross, but his enormous neck, his wide, powerful face, never moved; he didn’t bat an eyelash. His wide, pale eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on the altar.

  Fanny, holding a red handkerchief tightly to her chin, stared at him, her eyes burning. About a hundred policemen, some in uniform, some in civilian clothing but all unmistakable from their stiffness and their arrogant look of brutality, formed a barrier that separated this dazzling gathering of dignitaries and ministers from the masses.

  The heat became so unbearable that I felt my temples throbbing; I could hear the muffled, wild beating of my heart. We knelt down like everyone around us, and the hymns seemed to crash down from the magnificent vaults above.

  I couldn’t see Courilof any more; I was overwhelmed by a feeling of feverish unreality; automatically, like the people around me, I bent down to touch my head to the floor. From the marble flagstones, a cold breeze, smelling frozen and damp, wafted upwards.

  Finally, the service ended. We went outside; the police held the masses back; I saw Courilof get into a car, helped by a lackey in a black hat decorated with the official state emblem.

  The clergy walked around the church three times; you could see the icons’ long ribbons softly undulating in the clear night. Three times the priests passed by, holding up the sparkling cross, and their chants faded away into the distance.

  We broke away from the crowd and followed the Nevsky River back to my house. Like everyone else, we were holding lit candles; the perfume from the wax filled the air; they burned with tall, high, transparent flames, for the night was very warm, without a hint of a breeze. “Symbol of peace, symbol of happiness,” said some women behind us as they cupped their hands around the bright flames. Above our heads, the sky began to darken, but the horizon remained clear and pink, casting pale shadows and shimmering reflections over the water in the canals.

  Once again, we passed by the gates of the ministry; it was still open, and cars were going inside to the gardens. We could clearly see women in ball gowns through the windows and hear the faint sound of music playing. The entire house was lit up from top to
bottom.

  I don’t know why, but walking along that street, feeling sick (the smell of the incense and the heat in the church had made me nauseous and feverish), I thought of the minister’s impassive, hostile face and felt, for the first time in my life, a kind of hatred. My heart was filled with venom.

  Curiously, Fanny seemed to sense how I felt.

  “Well?” she said dryly, looking at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t reply.

  For the first time, this secretive and proud young woman told me about herself, her life story. We were sitting on one of those benches carved out of granite along the quayside. The wind from the Neva River was blowing, still crisp and heavy with the smell of ice; it blew out our candles.

  Since then, I have heard many of our women tell the same story; their lives were all similar with their wounded pride, their yearning for freedom and vengeance. But there was something affected and overly enthusiastic in her words and voice that troubled me and froze me to the core. She was obviously upset; her eyes sought mine with a kind of goodwill, the desire to move me, to fill me with pity, admiration, and horror. I was barely listening to her: that entire night was like a nightmare, and her words merged into the surreal confusion of a feverish dream.

  CHAPTER 7

  I SPENT A month keeping close watch at the villa, trying in vain to find a way to get inside. Little by little, I began to feel passionately excited; day and night I prowled around that house, questioning delivery men, the minister’s lowliest employees, talkative shopkeepers in the neighbourhood. Within a short time, I knew Courilof’s superficial life, his habits, the days and times he went to see the Emperor, the names of his friends, what ordinary people thought of him. Savage, ambitious: these words continually came up. I learned that he had lost his first wife, who came from an influential family protected by the Emperor’s mother. She had favoured Courilof’s rise to power; since Nicolas had ascended to the throne, Prince Alexander Alexandrovitch Nelrode had become the minister’s protector.

  Courilof had a son and a daughter from his first marriage, who lived with him; the boy was still a child and the girl was old enough to be married. About a year earlier, he had finally married his French mistress, Margot, a woman of dubious morals. Her real name was Marguerite Darcy; she was a former actress with a comic opera company and with whom Courilof had had a long-standing affair dating back to his youth.

  One day, I saw this woman coming out of the house with the minister’s daughter. I recognised the two women who had been sitting on either side of Courilof in the cathedral. The young woman was petite, with an extremely girlish face, almost childlike, with brown hair, pale, delicate, very pretty, and wide blue eyes; as for the woman… she was an extraordinary creature. She looked like an ageing bird of paradise: fading, losing its brilliant plumage, but still as dazzling as costume jewellery, the kind they wear in the theatre. She wore far too much make-up; the midday sun ruthlessly highlighted the pink stains on her cheeks, the fine but deep little wrinkles in her skin. Her face must have grown fuller with the passing years, but thanks to the pure lines of certain features, you could still see that she must have once been very beautiful.

  She passed by so closely that she knocked into me, then gathered up the folds of her lace skirt and looked at me. Her eyes, so close to mine, astonished me with their beauty. Very dark, sparkling, edged with thin, black eyelashes, they had an intense, weary expression that struck me. She reminded me of an old prostitute I’d known at Schroder’s, a complete wreck, who had that same intense, weary look.

  She muttered a few words of apology in a strong French accent (her voice was affected and unpleasant) and kept walking. I followed her for a while. She had a ridiculous walk; she bounced like many old actresses do, as if they’re afraid they’ll make the floorboards of the stage creak because their legs have grown heavy with age.

  “That woman,” Fanny told me later, “lived with him openly for fourteen years. They held infamous orgies at their house in the Iles.”

  I avoided being there when the minister himself came out. I didn’t want to attract the attention of his informers who, especially when he was going to see the Emperor, seemed to surface from every nook and cranny of the city and head for his house, as if their goal was to point out his presence to the whole neighbourhood. Later on, I found out that ministers who were somewhat in disfavour were kept under surveillance in this obviously tactless way; but at the time it surprised me.

  Only once did I spot Courilof, and it was almost by accident. I was involuntarily drawn to his neighbourhood and house. I was walking past his front door when I saw, from the corner, that he was about to come out; the doorman and policemen were standing even more to attention than usual, their faces attentive and stern. Here and there, on the street corners, policemen in civilian clothing paced back and forth. (I’d learned how to recognise them: of all the inhabitants of St. Petersburg, they were the only ones who wore bowler hats and carried big rolled-up umbrellas, summer and winter alike.)

  The door opened and Courilof headed for his car, followed by his secretary. He walked quickly and frowned, a sullen, dark expression on his face. I backed against a wall and watched him. Then, as strange as it may seem, he turned and looked at me, just as his wife had, but he seemed to look through me, without seeing me. It came to me in a flash that, to him, I was the living form Death had taken on this earth, and also—he was so fat, so impassive and solemn—I would take pleasure is seeing this superbly decorated mass, that harsh face explode into “flesh and bones flying in all directions.” At that moment, I hated him— as I had hated Dr. Schwann in the past—with a feeling that was almost physical. I looked away and he walked past, continuing along. I went and sat down in a little cabaret where I had something to eat and remained for part of the night.

  The next day, Fanny told me that sixty students had been arrested on charges of revolutionary activities at the insistence of the minister. One of the history professors had refused to answer their questions about the Paris Commune. These young people had protested in the only way they could, a stupid and childish way, smashing up their desks and singing revolutionary songs at the top of their voices (the “International” and the “Marseillaise” jumbled together), during the service in the chapel. Soldiers had cleared out the lecture halls.

  I dined at Madame Schroder’s place where she talked to me about Courilof’s wife; she’d known her when she was twenty, “when she sang ‘Girofle-Girofla’ in the little cabarets on the Iles. Afterwards, she became Prince Nelrode’s mistress before meeting His Excellency.”

  “Does Courilof know that the prince received the lady’s favours before him?” I asked.

  But Madame Schroder told me that this circumstance, for some unknown reason, had made them even closer. She was still talking when Fanny came in, to tell us that in the city soldiers had opened fire and several young men and women had been wounded and killed. I have never seen, on a human face, a greater look of hatred than I saw on Fanny’s face that day; her green eyes were blazing. Even I was deeply moved.

  When we left, the city was utterly silent, as if it had been crushed. Several times since then I have experienced that extraordinary silence: it is the most definite sign that a revolution is about to begin. On that particular night, there were a few small revolts in the factories and textile works, immediately suppressed with extreme violence.

  We walked through almost the entire city, hearing nothing except the sound of iron shutters quickly closing in front of the shops. Only a few remained open; a single lantern placed on the ground faintly lit them up.

  The gates were closed in front of the great rectangular courtyard of the university, but just as we were arriving, a small group of men carrying stretchers went inside. We slipped in behind them and the gates shut again. The university buildings were as dark as night. Suddenly a light shone from one of the rooms; you could see it through the tall windows of the lecture halls shimmering faintly in the clear night. I do
n’t know why, but it looked inexplicably sinister.

  We hid behind the high columns and remained there, motionless, spellbound, in spite of the very real danger, for the police continually rushed past us.

  On the other side of the street, the houses were locked and dark. Just as we were about to leave, blending in with people who were coming and going, a car sped past and we recognised Courilof.

  One of the guards went over to open the car door for him, but Courilof gestured that he wasn’t getting out. They exchanged a few words; even though I was quite close to them, I couldn’t make out anything. In the moonlight, as pure and clear as the rising sun, I could see the tall, motionless shape of the minister; his face was so cold and harsh that it didn’t even look human.

  At that moment, we heard footsteps coming from inside the courtyard and the men carrying the stretchers came out. There were eight of them, I think. As they passed in front of the car, they stopped and pulled back the sheets.

  A man was standing next to Courilof; I can still picture him, short and pale with a big yellowish moustache and a nervous tic that made his upper lip twitch. He wrote down the names of the victims on a register as the stretcher bearers handed him notebooks, identity papers, passports, all undoubtedly found in the victims’ clothes.

  For a second, I could see their young faces, their closed eyes, and that unforgettable look of secret, profound scorn that corpses have a few hours after they die, when the traces of suffering and terror have faded.