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

by Irene Nemirovsky

  It was light now. He could hear someone at his door. “What is it?” he called out mechanically.

  “It’s a telegram, Sir.”

  “Come in.”

  The servant entered. “Are you ill, Sir?”

  He didn’t reply. He took the telegram and opened it.

  “NEED MONEY. JOYCE .”

  “If you would like to reply, Sir,” the servant said, looking at him oddly, “the messenger is still here …”

  “What was that?” he said slowly. “No … There’s no reply.”

  He got back into bed and lay there motionless, his eyes closed. That was how Loewe found him, a few hours later. He hadn’t moved. He was breathing with great difficulty, his face contorted with pain, his head thrown back, his quivering lips colourless with fever and thirst.

  He refused to get up, to speak; he uttered not a single order, not a word; he seemed half-dead, not of this world. Loewe put letters into his hands: letters with demands for money, delays, assistance, but he signed none of them; they just fell from his lifeless fingers. Loewe, terrified, left the same night.

  Three days later, David Golder’s crash on the Stock Market was over, dragging down many other fortunes along with his own, like a senseless tide.

  JOYCE AND ALEC planned to spend the night near Ascain. They had left Madrid ten days earlier and were wandering through the Pyrenees, unable to tear themselves from each other’s arms.

  Joyce usually drove, while Alec and her dog, Jill, dozed, worn out by the heat of the sun. They would stop when it was dark and have dinner in the garden of some rural hotel where couples in love were serenaded by accordion players. The wistaria was in full bloom, and the trees hung with paper lanterns that sometimes caught light in a burst of golden flame that lapped at the leaves before turning to ash and falling to the ground. The young couple would sit at a wobbly wooden table caressing each other, while a girl with her hair tied back in a dark head-scarf served them chilled wine. Then they would go upstairs to spend the night in a sparsely furnished, cool bedroom, where they would make love, fall asleep, then leave the next day.

  As evening fell, they were driving along a road near Ascain, in the mountains. The setting sun bathed the houses of the small village in a pale-pink light the colour of sugared almonds.

  “Tomorrow,” said Alec, “it’s back to work… Lady Rovenna.

  “Oh!” muttered Joyce, angrily. “She’s so ghastly, so ugly and mean…”

  “We have to live,” he said, then added, laughing, “When we’re married, Joy, I’ll only sleep with pretty young women.” He placed a gentle hand on Joy’s delicate neck and gave it a squeeze. “Joy, I really want you, you know that. Only you …”

  “Of course I know,” said Joy, glibly, her lovely painted lips in a triumphant little pout. “Of course I know.”

  It was getting darker. Deep within the Pyrenees, the peaceful little clouds that formed at night were beginning to slip down into the valleys where they would nestle until morning. Joyce stopped the car outside a hotel. A woman came out and opened the car door. “Monsieur, Madame. A single room with a large bed?” she asked with a smile, as soon as she saw them.

  It was a very large room with a pale wood floor and an enormous, high bed. Joyce ran and threw herself down on the flowered quilt.

  “Alec … come here…”

  He leaned over her.

  A little later, she gave a moan: “Mosquitoes… look…”

  They were flying around the light on the ceiling. Alec quickly switched it off. Night had secretly, suddenly descended while they were kissing. Through the window, from the narrow garden full of sunflowers, came the sound of water flowing in a fountain.

  “Where’s the white wine we left to chill?” asked Alec, his eyes shining. “I’m hungry and thirsty …”

  “What have we got to eat?”

  “I ordered some crayfish and the wine,” said Alec. “As for the rest, we’ll have to make do with the dish of the day, my love. Do you realise we only have five hundred francs left? We’ve spent fifty thousand in ten days. If your father doesn’t send you some money…”

  “When I think ofthat man,” said Joyce, bitterly, “how he let me leave without a penny! I’ll never forgive him. If it hadn’t been for old Fischl…”

  “What exactly did old Fischl ask you to do for his fifty thousand francs?” asked Alec coyly.

  “Nothing!” she shouted crossly, “I swear! Just the idea of him touching me with his ugly hands is enough to make me sick! You’re the one who sleeps with old women like Lady Rovenna for money, you horrible little toad!”

  She covered his mouth with hers and angrily bit his lip as if it were a piece of fruit.

  Alec let out a cry. “Oh! I’m bleeding, you horrible little beast, look…”

  She laughed in the darkness.

  “Come on, let’s go downstairs…”

  They went out into the garden, Jill following close behind them. They were alone; the hotel seemed empty. In the clear evening sky, a large yellow moon hung suspended between the trees. Joy lifted the lid of the steaming hot soup tureen, breathing in its aroma with a little growl of pleasure.

  “Oh, that smells good… Give me your bowl…”

  She served him standing up; she looked so strange with her make-up, her bare arms, and her pearls flung behind her that he suddenly burst out laughing as he watched her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing… It’s funny … You don’t look like a woman who…”

  “A young woman,” she interrupted, frowning.

  “I can’t picture you ever being a little girl… I bet you came into this world singing and dancing, with rings on your fingers and make-up on your eyes, didn’t you? Do you know how to cut this bread? I want some.”

  “No, do you?”

  “No.”

  They called the serving girl who cut the round, golden loaf, pressing it against her chest. Joy watched her with her head thrown back, lazily stretching out her bare arms. “When I was little, I was very beautiful… They would stroke me, tease me…”

  “Who do you mean by they?”

  “Men. Especially old men, of course …”

  The servant took away the empty dishes and came back with an earthenware bowl of crayfish swimming in a steaming, delicious-smelling, spicy broth. They devoured them with great gusto. Joyce added even more pepper and then stuck out her tongue as if it were on fire. Alec slowly poured the chilled wine; it made the glasses turn misty.

  “We’ll have champagne in our room tonight, as we always do,” murmured Joyce, slightly tipsy, while cracking an enormous crayfish between her teeth. “What kind of champagne do they have? I want some Clicquot, very dry.”

  She raised her glass between her cupped hands.

  “Look… the wine is the same colour as the moon tonight, all golden.

  They drank together from the same glass, merging their moist, peppery lips, lips so young that nothing could change the way they tasted of ripe fruit.

  With the chicken sauteed with olives and sweet pimentos, they drank a bottle of ruby Chambertin, full-bodied and warm, that left a wonderful taste in the mouth. Then Alec ordered some brandy and poured drops of it into two large glasses of champagne. Joyce drank. While they were having dessert, she started acting wild. With her dog on her lap, she threw back her head, looked up at the sky, then, with all her strength, pulled the golden locks of her short hair straight into the air.

  “I want to sleep outdoors all night… I want to spend my whole life here … I want to spend my whole life making love … What do you say?”

  “I love your little breasts,” said Alec. Then he fell silent.

  He didn’t speak much when he drank. He continued pouring the brandy into the golden champagne, drop by drop.

  It was a peaceful night in the country; the mountains were bathed in moonlight; the cicadas were chirping.

  “They think it’s daytime,” murmured Joyce, delighted. The little d
og had fallen asleep in her arms; she didn’t want to move. “Alec,” she said, “put a cigarette in my mouth and light it for me.

  Alec groped about in the dark, found a cigarette, and put it between her lips, then passionately grabbed the back of her neck and muttered something she couldn’t understand.

  When Joy suddenly uncrossed her legs, the little dog woke up, jumped down, stretched out on the grass, and nuzzled the moist, sweet-smelling September earth.

  “Come, Joy,” Alec urged quietly. “Come and play at love.

  “Come on, Jill,” Joyce said to her dog.

  Jill looked up and seemed to hesitate. But the couple were already disappearing into the darkness, walking towards the house with slow, tottering steps, their young, intoxicated faces leaning towards each other. Jill got up with a throaty little noise that sounded like someone sighing and followed them, stopping every few steps to sniff the ground.

  As usual, once inside the bedroom, the dog lay down facing the bed, and Joy repeated, as she did every night, “Jill, you naughty girl, we should make you pay to watch!”

  The moon spread great puddles of silver over the floor. Joy undressed slowly, then went and stood naked in front of the window, wearing only her pearls; they shimmered in the cool moonlight.

  “I’m beautiful, aren’t I, Alec? Do you want me?”

  “It’s our last night together,” Alec replied wistfully, like a child. “We have no more money, there’s nothing left. We have to go back, we have to part… Until when?”

  “My God, you’re right…”

  That night, for the first time, they didn’t throw themselves hungrily into making love only to fall asleep afterwards, like wild young animals tired after doing battle; instead, with heavy hearts, they lay beneath the flower-covered quilt and, bathed in moonlight, cradled each other for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, without speaking and almost without desire.

  Then they felt cold and closed the shutters, pulling the heavy blue and pink curtains across the window. The electricity had been turned off, it was late; a burning candle on the edge of the table sent their shadows dancing to the ceiling. They could hear, very far away, the muffled sound of hooves hitting the ground.

  “There’s a farm nearby, most likely,” said Alec, as Joy looked up. “The animals must be dreaming…”

  Jill, still asleep, turned over with a great sigh, so weary and sad that Joy laughed and whispered, “Daddy sighs like that when he’s lost on the Stock Market… Oh, Alec, your knees are so cold…”

  On the white ceiling, their shadows mingled, forming an eerie knot, like a bouquet of flowers whose stems are entwined.

  Joyce let her hands slide, slowly, down her trembling aching hips.

  “Oh, Alec! I’m so in love with love …”

  GOLDER RETURNED TO Paris alone. After the house in Biarritz had been sold, Gloria and Joyce went on a cruise on Behring’s yacht, with Hoyos, Alec, and the Mannerings. It was not until December that Gloria returned to Paris; she immediately came round with an antiques dealer to arrange the sale of the furniture.

  It was with a kind of sardonic pleasure that Golder watched the contents of the apartment being taken away: the table decorated with bronze sphinxes, the four-poster Louis XV bed, with its cupids, bows, and arrows. For a long while now, he’d been sleeping in the sitting room on a narrow, hard fold-out bed. Towards evening, when the final removal vans had gone, there remained nothing in the apartment except a few wicker chairs and a pine kitchen table. Wood shavings and old newspapers were scattered on the floor. Gloria came back. Golder hadn’t moved. He was propped up on the bed, a black plaid blanket over his chest, looking with an expression of relief at the enormous bare windows, stripped of the damask curtains that had kept out the light and air.

  The sound of Gloria’s heavy footsteps was amplified by the bare wood floor. The noise seemed to surprise her; she shuddered nervously, stopped, then started walking again on tiptoe, trying to keep her balance, but the noise didn’t stop. She sat down opposite Golder.

  “David…”

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment, their eyes hard. She was trying to smile, but, despite her efforts, her harsh, square jaw jutted forward with a voracious movement that made her face look carnivorous when she wasn’t careful.

  “Well,” she said finally, nervously flicking the gloves she was holding, “are you satisfied, are you happy now?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  She clenched her teeth. “You’re mad…” she hissed quietly. “You’re a mad old fool…” Her voice was strange and sharp. “So you think I’m going to starve to death without you and your damned money, do you? Well, just look at me … I don’t exactly look very poor, do I? Have you seen this?” She shook her wrist at him, making her new bracelet jingle. “Did you pay for that? No! So, what was this all about? What were you hoping to accomplish? You’re the only one who’s suffering, you fool… As for me, well, I’m managing… And everything that was here belongs to me, to me,” she repeated, angrily striking the wooden chair, “and if you ever try to stop me from selling anything, however and whenever I want, you’ll have to deal with me, you thief! You should be thrown into prison,” she spat. “To leave your wife penniless after so many years of marriage … Answer me, say something,” she shouted suddenly. “You know very well that I can see the truth! Well? Admit it! You did it so I’d have no money … You’ve bankrupted yourself and so many other poor souls just for that. You’d rather die between these four walls just to see me poor as well, is that it? Well? Is it?”

  “I don’t give a damn about you,” said Golder. He closed his eyes. “I really don’t give a damn about you, if you only knew …” he murmured, “not about you, your money, or anything to do with you … And don’t think your money will last, my poor girl. Believe me, when you have no husband to keep topping up the cash, it goes very quickly …” There was no anger in his voice. He spoke in the low, measured tones of an old man, pulling up the collar of his jacket against the cold. An icy wind blew in from the street through the cracks in the bare window. “Yes, how quickly it goes… You’ve been playing the Stock Market, haven’t you? They say that any stock you touch will go sky-high this year. But that won’t last forever… And as for Hoyos…” He let out a surprising little laugh that made him sound almost young. “Oh, what a life you’ll have in a year or two, you poor things!”

  “And what about you? What about your life? You’ve buried yourself alive!”

  “It’s what I wanted to do,” Golder said abruptly with a kind of haughty anger, “and I have always done what I wanted to do on this earth.”

  She fell silent and, very slowly, smoothed out her gloves.

  “Are you going to stay here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you have some money left, then?” she murmured. “You made sure you’re all right…”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said quietly, “but don’t try to get any of it. Save yourself the trouble. I’ve made very sure …”

  She gave a scornful laugh, nodding at the empty room.

  “Oh! I’m happy to be rid of all ofthat,” he said wearily, closing his eyes. “The sphinxes, the laurels… I don’t need any of it.”

  Picking up her fox stole and her handbag, Gloria went and stood in front of the mirror above the fireplace. She began carefully to powder her face.

  “I think Joyce will be coming to see you soon…”

  When he didn’t respond, she murmured, “She needs money…”

  In the mirror, she could see a strange look pass over Golder’s hard face.

  “All this is because of Joyce,” she said quietly and quickly, almost in spite of herself, “isn’t it?”

  She could clearly see his cheeks and hands quivering, as if overcome by a sudden chill.

  “It’s all because of Joyce. And yet Joyce hasn’t done anything to you … How ironic.”

  She let out a little forced laugh, dry and bitter.

&nb
sp; “You adore her… My God, you adore her…just like an old lover… It’s grotesque …”

  “That’s enough,” shouted Golder.

  Her instinct was to recoil in fear, but she restrained herself.

  “So,” she whispered, raising her eyebrows, “are you starting at that again? Do you want me to have you locked up?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you…” he sighed, sounding angry and tired. “Get out.”

  He seemed to be making a great effort to stay calm. Very slowly, he wiped away the sweat that was running down his face.

  “Go. I’m asking you to go.”

  “Well, then, I suppose this is good-bye?”

  Without replying, he stood up and went into the next room. The thud of the door closing behind him echoed through the empty house. She remembered that he had always ended their quarrels like this. Then she realised that she would probably never see him again. This solitary life would undoubtedly finish him off, and soon … “To have lived so many years together to end up like this … And why? At our age … Over things that happen all the time … He made it happen… Well, it was his loss… But how ridiculous it was, by God… how ridiculous…”

  She closed the door of the apartment and walked wearily down the stairs.

  Golder was alone.

  GOLDER WAS ON his own for a long time. At least his family wasn’t bothering him any more.

  The doctor came to see him every morning; quickly walking through the dark rooms, he would go into Golder’s bedroom, place a stethoscope on his old chest and listen to the results of the night’s heavy, laboured breathing. But Golder’s heart condition was improving. The pain had subsided. And Golder too seemed to have subsided into a kind of slumber, a depressed stupor. He would get up and dress, trying to move as slowly as possible in order to save as much strength, as much of his life force as he could. Then he would walk around the apartment twice, aware of every movement of his muscles, every beat of his pulse and heart. After that, he would measure out his medicine himself, one gram at a time, on the kitchen scales, then boil an egg using his watch as a timer.