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

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “Vanity of vanities, Monsieur Legrand, everything on this earth is but ashes and vanity. One amuses oneself however one can at my age,” he added, trying in vain to sound indifferent. “Honours are the baby rattles of the elderly.”

  He thought for a moment and closed the drawer. Finally he gestured to me, inviting me to sit down next to him. He talked to me about Bismarck, whom he’d known. “I met him; I went to visit the great man once; he was dismissed by an ungrateful ruler, like me … He lived alone, with his mastiff dogs… Being idle is deadly…”

  He stopped for a moment, sighed: “Power is a delectable poison … To some people,” he hastened to add, “to other people … As for me, well, I’ve always been philosophical.”

  He forced a slight, ironic smile, the way the dead Prince Nelrode used to do. But his wide, pale eyes stared into mine with a very human look of sadness and anxiety.

  July finally came and went. I received my order to kill Courilof on 3 October. The Emperor of Germany was going to visit the Tsar that day. A performance was being given at the Marie Theatre. The bomb had to be thrown as they came outside, not in the theatre itself, to avoid any accidents; still, it had to be early enough for the public and foreign dignitaries to see the assassination happen before their very eyes.

  I’d been called to St. Petersburg by Fanny. She was living in a kind of attic, above the dark canals of the Fontanka, in a room she shared with a family of workers.

  I remember how hot it was that summer day and the blinding limestone dust that flew up from the scaffolding, lit up by the blazing sun. We were alone in her room. I told her I wanted to see one of the leaders of the Party. She didn’t reply at first, then stared at me with her narrow, gleaming eyes.

  “And just who would you like to see?” she finally asked.

  I didn’t know. I insisted.

  “Your orders are to see no one.”

  I was getting annoyed and insisted again. We parted without having agreed on anything.

  A few days passed; she called for me to come to her place again one evening. I crossed the rickety little wooden entrance, past the banister that led to her room; then a man opened her door, came towards me, and shook my hand. A small lamp, hanging on the wall, gave off such a dim light that all I could make out of him was a wide-brimmed hat. His voice was rather strange, dry and sarcastic. His careful economy with words convinced me that he was used to speaking in public.

  “We can’t go in,” he said, shrugging lazily, wearily, in the direction of the room. “There’s a woman asleep in there, ill or drunk. I’m …” (He told me his name. This famous terrorist has since died, executed by the Soviets, whose bitter enemy he’d become in 1918.)

  It was true; I could hear a woman moaning, interspersed with hiccoughs and groans.

  “You wanted to speak to me,” he continued.

  And he didn’t even lower his voice in that hallway full of drunks, beggars, prostitutes leaving to go to work, half-naked kids who rushed past like rats. They walked by, staring at us, and pushed us out of the way. The man leaned against the banister and looked down at the dark shaft of the stairwell. That was where Courilof’s fate was to be decided.

  I said I didn’t want to kill the minister. He didn’t protest, just sighed wearily, like Courilof did when his secretary came to ask for additional information about a letter he had to finish.

  “All right, fine, we’ll find someone else.”

  A drunk started singing in one of the filthy hovels. The man banged impatiently on the wall.

  “So then… Shall we go downstairs?”

  I stopped him again, and then … Ah! I can’t remember what I said any more, but it felt like I was fighting for my brother’s life.

  “Why? What’s the point? He’s just a poor fool; if you get rid of him, the next one won’t be any better, nor the one after.”

  “I know,” he said, infuriated, “I know. It will start all over again; you know very well we’re not killing a man, we’re killing the regime.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I felt a kind of embarrassment, as usual, afraid I might burst into the kind of pompous speech I so hated. But I simply said, “Do you want to punish someone who is guilty, or remove the cause of the trouble, the problem, someone you consider dangerous?”

  He became more thoughtful. He half sat on the flimsy little banister, steadied himself and whistled softly.

  “The latter, of course.”

  “He’s finished. It’s not been made official. But he’s about to be replaced.”

  He swore in a low, muffled voice.

  “Again! The animal’s already been caught! And when will it be made official?”

  I gestured that I didn’t know.

  “Listen,” he said quickly, “the third of October is the date set. Remember that there are going to be strikes in all the universities in October. There will be riots. Many students will die if Courilof remains in power. Ifwe get rid of him, we’ll terrify his successor and save many lives that are far more valuable than that inhuman machine.”

  “What if he’s resigned from office by October third?” I asked.

  “Well, too bad then,” he replied. “What can we do? He’ll be left alone. Otherwise, you understand, whether it’s you or someone else…”

  He didn’t finish. The drunk began singing again in a plaintive voice. Fanny crept into the hallway.

  “Leave, now; the spy is coming.”

  We went downstairs together. The man walked quickly; I could see he wanted to leave before me so I wouldn’t be able to see his face, but I got ahead of him and quickly looked at him. He was a young man, but worn out, and with gentle eyes. He looked at me, surprised.

  “Listen, in the end,” I said rapidly, “it’s a dirty business; don’t you sometimes wish you could say to hell with it all and get out?”

  I don’t know why, but while I was looking at him, I felt something dramatic, something intense in our conversation.

  He frowned. “No, I have no pity whatsoever,” he said, responding to my thoughts rather than my words, as if he could read my mind. “Those people deserve no more pity than mad dogs.”

  I smiled in spite of myself, recognising Langenberg’s words.

  “You don’t understand,” he continued haughtily. “You emerged from your glass cage wrapped in cotton wool; you should have asked your father.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with pity,” I said. “It’s more that we seem to lack a kind of sense of humour… as do our enemies, for that matter… Don’t you think?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “You have to make a choice, don’t you? On October third!”

  He said it again. I’d got the message and told him so. He smiled, nodding.

  “You’ll see; as soon as you have a bomb wrapped in your handkerchief or a gun in your trouser pocket and you see all those beaming people with their medals and fine decorations, the quiver that runs down your spine will be the ultimate reward. I’ve killed two of them.”

  He tapped his hat and disappeared. After he left me, I roamed the streets of St. Petersburg, the same three streets around the dark canal, until morning.

  CHAPTER 23

  ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLY, Courilof changed, growing sombre and anxious. At this time of year, he and his wife normally went to their house in the Caucasus or in France. But this year, it didn’t even occur to him to leave. I don’t know what he was expecting to happen. He didn’t even know himself. Probably he thought that the Emperor would change his mind … or that the world would grind to a halt since, he, Courilof, was no longer a minister.

  Finally, towards the end of July, the Emperor’s decree appeared, naming Dahl as successor to Courilof. He bore the blow without flinching, but he seemed to age very quickly. I noticed that his wife’s presence weighed heavily on him. He was even more attentive and polite to her, but you could sense that she was a constant reminder to him of how he had sacrificed his career, and that memory was painful to him. The children, Ina and Ivan, were
away—spending the summer somewhere in the Orel region with their aunt, as they did every year.

  It seemed as if only my presence was bearable to the Killer Whale. I think it was because I walked very quietly, and he found my silence comforting. I have always walked as lightly and silently as possible.

  The house had become as empty and hollow as an abandoned beehive. Quite naturally, no one came to see the disgraced minister any more, afraid of compromising themselves; but what astonished me was the surprise and hurt he seemed to feel because of this. In the morning, he would shout regally, “My post!” It echoed through the entire house.

  The servant would bring a few letters. Courilofwould eagerly look at them, then throw them down on his bed, riffle through them and sigh. His face remained impassive; only his fingers trembled slightly.

  “No message from the Emperor? Nothing?”

  As he asked, he blushed visibly, emphasising his icy expression even more. You could tell that the question itself was painful, but that he couldn’t help asking it. I remember the blood inching slowly up his face, colouring his pale features, right up to his high forehead. He jumped every time the bell rang, every time he heard a carriage passing in the street.

  The weather was hot and beautiful. Courilof often went out in the garden early, breathing in the perfume of the flowers, of the great lawns covered in a sea of grass, like a prairie. They were cut at this time of year; you could hear the hissing of the scythe and the peasants’ voices carrying through the peaceful air.

  “Cut down just like us, Monsieur Legrand, just like us!” He stopped; looked around him, over towards the gulf, pale grey beneath the blue sky.

  “It’s easier to breathe this pure air; it hasn’t been polluted yet by the stench of men. Don’t you agree, Monsieur Legrand?”

  He stabbed a leaf with the end of his cane, then raised it up to the light, stopping to look at the grass and the shrubs without seeing them, his heart heavy. He started to say how much the singing birds delighted him, but then his face contorted with pain.

  “That’s enough; let’s go back! I can’t bear their chirping! The sun is making my head spin,” he added, pointing to the pale northern sun reflected in the water.

  It was the time of day when he used to report to the Emperor.

  ” Cincinnatus … Let us begin to work our plough …” Whenever he mentioned the Emperor or the Empress, the court or the ministers, he let out a short little snigger. As he stood beneath the stinging whip of adversity, this man—whom I had never known to be either spiritual or bitter—now voiced rather cruel and amusing verdicts on both people and things.

  “Didn’t you ever come across revolutionary immigrants in Switzerland?” he asked me once.

  Fearing a trap, I replied: “No.”

  “Fanatics, cranks, villains!”

  But, all in all, they scarcely interested him. What counted for him, for his sovereign, for Russia, were the plots of the grand dukes, the ministers, and, most especially, the conspiracies and schemes of Dahl and his cohorts. He was their victim; he called them “diabolical” and thought they were poisonous. He never spoke to me about it: I wasn’t meant to know anything. I was nothing but an insignificant doctor, unworthy of sharing the destiny and misfortunes of the great men of this world. But in spite of himself, everything he said led back to what had happened to him.

  My poor Courilof! I had never been as close to him, never understood him so well, despised him so much, felt as sorry for him as I did on those days, those nights. The pale, clear nights lasted twelve hours on the horizon, then began to darken, for it was August; in this climate it was already autumn, an arid, sad season everywhere, but especially here. I advised him to leave. I talked to him about Switzerland and a house in Vevey, a white house with a climbing red vine, like the Bauds’ house … I drew the most idyllic pictures for him. In vain. He clung to his proximity to the Emperor, to his memories, to the illusion of power.

  “Ministers, puppets,” he repeated furiously, over and over again. “An Emperor? No, a saint! God preserve us from such saints on the throne! Everything in its proper place! As for the Empress!”

  He stopped, pinching his lips into a scornful pout and sighed deeply. “What I need is something to do … “

  He needed something else as well: the illusion of influencing people’s fate. You never get tired of that; otherwise, you’re finished … completely finished… I know that now.

  “You’re the only one who’s remained faithful to this old, disgraced man,” he said to me one day.

  I made some vague reply. He sighed, then looked at me oddly, in that charming way of his.

  “All in all,” he remarked, “you’re something of a mystery.”

  “Why?” I said.

  It gave me a certain sense of pleasure to ask.

  “Why?” he repeated slowly. “I don’t know.”

  At that very moment, I knew that some doubt had crossed his mind. It was unbelievable to see how truly bizarre and obtuse these people were: they deported and imprisoned masses of innocent people and poor fools, but the really dangerous enemies of the regime slipped through their nets unharmed. Yes, at that moment, and for the first time, Courilof was suspicious. His uneasiness probably affected his reasoning. But without a doubt, he thought he had nothing left to fear; or perhaps he felt the same things towards me as I did towards him: understanding, curiosity, a vague kind of fraternity, pity, scorn … How could I know? Perhaps he wasn’t thinking anything of the sort… He shrugged his shoulders slightly and said nothing.

  We went back to the house to have lunch with Marguerite Eduardovna, the three of us sitting around a table that was meant for twenty. During the meal, he was so irritable it verged on madness. One day, he smashed one of the Sevres vases that decorated the table; he threw it at the butler’s head, I don’t remember why now. It was pink, made of soft-paste porcelain, and it held the last small trembling roses of summer, yellow and almost faded, deliciously fragrant. When the butler had silently collected up all the debris, Courilof was ashamed; he gestured for him to go away. Then he shrugged his shoulders, looked at me and said: “We can be so childish!”

  He sat motionless for a long time, his eyes lowered.

  In the afternoon, he would go and lie down, spending long hours on his settee, reading. He called for stacks of books, arm-fuls of them, French novels whose pages he meticulously cut to pass the time. He would slip the blade between the pages, smooth them out, then cut them apart with little slicing movements. Lost in thought, he never made a sound. I often saw him staring into space with his wide, sad eyes, holding a large book open in front of him. Then he would look at the last page, sigh, and throw the book down.

  “I’m bored,” he said over and over again, “I’m so bored!”

  He’d start pacing back and forth in his bedroom, a room filled with many icons. When his wife came in, his face would light up, but almost immediately, he’d look away and start wandering aimlessly from room to room again.

  The few people who called to see him were sent away. He was reading the Lives of the Saints, I recall, and pretended it was some consolation to him. But since he was so attached to worldly possessions, to physical pleasures, he also dismissed religious books with a sigh.

  “God will forgive me … We are all just poor sinners.” He had pretensions of being European, so found his involuntary sighs more disconcerting than anyone else did.

  There was only one thing he never tired of, one thing that he really loved. He gestured for me to sit down opposite him: he had some tea and lamps brought in. It already felt like autumn; a misty fog fell on to the Iles at dusk, dense and full of shadows. Then the Killer Whale would tell me about his past. For hours at a time, he would talk about himself: his services to the Monarchy, his family, his childhood, his opinions about the role of a great politician. But on the rare occasions he deigned to talk about men he’d known, he surprised me. He found a bitterly funny way of describing them. He talked about their pet
ty intrigues, the misappropriation of public funds, their thefts and betrayals, so commonplace in the city and at court, a bizarre crowd who amused me.

  I think it’s because of Courilof that I was later able to give some good advice to the rulers of the time to help them manage things. This was when the glorious days of the Revolution were over and we had to deal with Europe and the growing demands of the people. He taught me more than he ever knew, my old enemy; and it was just the opposite of what he thought he was teaching me …

  Often I wasn’t even listening to what he said, just to his tone of voice, tinged with bitterness and venom; I watched his ghostly pale, haughty face, already marked by death and devoured by envy and ambition. A small mahogany table with two old-fashioned lamps and painted metal shades sat between us. Their flames burned peacefully in the dark. You could hear the policemen, ever present like me, even though they no longer had a minister to protect; they made their rounds beneath the windows, whispering softly as they passed each other in the night.

  “Men… men,” repeated Courilof. “Ministers, princes, what puppets they all are! True power lies in the hands of madmen or children, who don’t even know they have it. The rest of humanity is chasing after shadows!”

  That was exactly how he spoke: he was a man who lacked simplicity, but also managed to speak the truth.

  Then came another silent dinner. Afterwards, Marguerite Eduardovna played the piano as we paced back and forth through the great reception room: the sparkling wooden floors reflected the lights from the chandeliers, all lit up for his solitary stroll. Sometimes, he would stop and shout in frustration: “Tomorrow I’m leaving!”

  And the next day would be exactly the same.

  CHAPTER 24

  MEANWHILE, THE TROUBLES in the capital continued. From the universities, the problems spread to the factories where, in certain provinces, bloody battles broke out once more. Dahl didn’t know how to deal with either the schools or the universities.