David Golder, the Ball, Snow in Autumn, the Courilof Affair

  DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT

  1942 Last short story published in Gringoire (February). Entrusts her chief editor, Andre Sabatier, with all her manuscripts (March). Begins to work on Les Feux de l’automne (Autumn Fires) and Captivite (Captivity), the third volume of Suite francaise. Arrested by French police on July 13, in pursuance of the latest Nazi decrees. Taken to a detainment camp at Pithiviers. Her last story, “Les Vierges” (The Virgins), is published in Present on July 15: “Look at me. I am alone now, but my solitude was not chosen or wanted, it is the worst one, the humiliated, bitter solitude of abandonment and betrayal.” Departs for Auschwitz on July 17. Dies in Auschwitz of typhus on August 19. Michel is arrested and gassed at Auschwitz on November 6. Their daughters Denise and Elisabeth live hidden until the Liberation of France in August 1944. Camus: Le Mythe de Sisyphe; L’Etranger. Eluard: Poesie et verite. Vercors: Le Silence de la mer. Queneau: Pierrot mon ami. Simone Weil writes essays and articles which are later assembled in Attente de Dieu and Pensees sans ordre sur l’amour de Dieu. Maritain: Les droits de l’homme et la loi naturelle.

  1946 Posthumous publication ofLa Vie de Tchekhov (The Life of Chekhov), Albin Michel.

  1947 Les Biens de ce monde (The Goods of this World), Albin Michel.

  1957 Les Feux d’automne (Autumn Fires), Albin Michel.

  2004 Suite francaise (Denoel). (English translation published in 2006.)

  2005 Le Maitre des ames (Master of Souls), Denoel (formerly Les Echelles du Levant).

  2007 Chaleur du sang (Fire in the Blood), Denoel—a previously unpublished novel.

  HISTORICAL EVENTS

  Laval is restored, the result of German pressure (April). He agrees to conscription of French workers for German factories in return for the release of French POWs and undertakes to take action against the growing French underground movement.

  A curfew imposed on Jews (February 7). First Jews from France deported to Poland and Germany (March). In total some 75,000 Jews are deported during the war, of whom only about 3 per cent survive.

  Jews ordered to wear the yellow star of David (June 7). Second “Otto List” (July). “Operation Vent Printanier” (July): on the orders of the German authorities, French police undertake to arrest foreign Jews, targeting mainly Eastern European adults without French citizenship.

  Fall of Singapore. German army reaches Stalingrad. Rommel defeated at El Alamein. Allied landings in French North Africa (November) to a short-lived resistance from Vichy troops in Morocco and Algeria. Hitler orders German troops to occupy the whole of France (November 11): Vichy government survives on suffrance.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt, authors of The Life of Irene Nemirovsky, who have provided the biographical details necessary for this chronology.

  DAVID GELDER

  “NO,” SAID GOLDER, tilting his desklamp so that the light shone directly into the face of Simon Marcus who was sitting opposite him on the other side of the table. For a moment Golder observed the wrinkles and lines that furrowed Marcus’s swarthy face whenever he moved his lips or closed his eyes, like the ripples on dark water when the wind blows across it. But his hooded eyes with their Oriental languor remained calm, bored, and indifferent. A face as unyielding as a wall. Golder carefully lowered the lamp’s flexible metal stem.

  “A hundred, Golder? Think about it. It’s a good price,” said Marcus.

  “No,” Golder murmured again, then added, “I don’t want to sell.”

  Marcus laughed. His long white teeth, capped in gold, gleamed eerily in the darkness.

  “How much were your famous oil shares worth in 1920 when you first bought them?” he drawled; his voice was nasal, sarcastic.

  “I bought them at four hundred. And if those Soviet pigs had given the nationalised land back to the oil companies, I would have made a lot of money. Lang and his group were backing me. In 1913, the daily output from the Teisk region was already ten thousand tons… seriously. After the Genoa Conference, I remember my shares fell from four hundred to one hundred and two … After that…” Golder made a vague gesture of frustration. “But I held on to them … Money was no object, in those days.”

  “Yes, but now, in 1926, don’t you realise that your Russian oilfields aren’t worth shit to you? Well? I mean, it’s not as if you have either the means or the inclination to go and run them yourself, is it? All you can hope to do is shift them for a higher price on the Stock Market… A hundred is a good sum.”

  Golder slowly rubbed his eyes; the smoke that filled the room had irritated them.

  “No, I don’t want to sell.” He spoke more quietly this time. “I’ll sell after Tubingen Petroleum signs the agreement for the concession in Teisk. I think you know the one I’m talking about…”

  Marcus mumbled what sounded like “Ah, yes…” and fell silent.

  “You’ve been negotiating that deal behind my back since last year, Marcus,” Golder said slowly. “You know you have … I bet they offered you a good price for my shares once they closed the deal, didn’t they?”

  He said no more, for his heart was beating almost painfully, just as it always did when he claimed a victory. Marcus slowly stubbed out his cigar in the overflowing ashtray.

  “If he suggests we go fifty-fifty,” Golder thought suddenly, “it will all be over for him.”

  He leaned forward so he could hear what Marcus was about to say. There was a brief silence, then Marcus spoke.

  “Why don’t we go halves, Golder?”

  Golder clenched his teeth. “Are you serious?”

  “You know, Golder, you shouldn’t make another enemy,” Marcus murmured, lowering his eyes. “You’ve got enough already.”

  His hands were clutching the wooden table, and as they moved, his nails made short, sharp little scratching noises. Beneath the light of the lamp, his long fingers with their heavy rings shone against the mahogany of the Empire desk; they were trembling.

  Golder smiled. “You’re no longer very threatening, my friend…”

  Marcus remained silent for a moment, carefully examining his manicured nails.

  “Fifty-fifty, David! What do you say? We’ve been partners for twenty-six years. Let’s wipe the slate clean and start again. If you’d been here in December when Tubingen spoke to me …”

  Golder fiddled with the telephone wire, winding it around his wrists.

  “In December,” he repeated, frowning. “How good of you … only …”

  He said no more. Marcus knew as well as he did that in December he had been in America looking for investors in Golmar, the company that had bound them together for so many years, like a ball and chain.

  “David, there’s still time…” Marcus continued. “Let’s negotiate with the Soviets together, what do you say? It’s a difficult business. We’ll split everything down the middle— commissions, profits … How about it? That’s fair, isn’t it? David? Otherwise…”

  He waited for some reply, an agreement, even an insult, but Golder’s breathing was laboured and he said nothing.

  “Listen,” Marcus whispered, “Tubingen’s not the only company in the world…” He touched Golder’s unmoving arm as if to wake him. “There are other companies, newer ones, and…” he searched for the right words. “There are companies more willing to speculate, companies that didn’t sign the 1922 Oil Agreement and who don’t give a damn about who holds the old stock, you, for example … They could…”

  “You mean Amrum Oil?” said Golder.

  “Oh!” Marcus winced. “So you know about that as well? Well listen, my friend, I’m sorry, but the Russians are going to sign with Amrum. Since you’re now refusing to play ball, you can keep your shares in Teisk till Judgement Day. You can take them with you to your grave …”

  “The Russians aren’t going to sign with Amrum.”

  “They’ve already signed,” cried Marcus.

  Golder waved his hand. “Yes, I know. A provisional agreement. But it w
as supposed to be ratified by Moscow within forty-five days. That was yesterday. Now it’s all up in the air again, and you’re worried, so you came to see what you could get out of me …” Golder started to cough. “Let me explain it all to you. Tubingen right? He wasn’t too happy when Amrum whipped those Persian oilfields out from under his feet two years ago. So, this time, I suspect he’d rather die than lose the fight. Actually, it hasn’t been that difficult so far: just a question of offering a bit more to that little Jew who has been helping you negotiate with the Soviets. Give them a call right now, if you don’t believe me…”

  “You’re lying, you pig!” shouted Marcus in the strange, shrill voice of a hysterical woman.

  “Give them a call. You’ll see.”

  “And… what about Tubingen? Does the old man know?”

  “Of course.”

  “This is all your doing, you bastard, you crook!”

  “Well, what did you expect? Think about it… Last year there was that oil deal in Mexico, and three years ago the high octane deal. How many millions went from my pocket into yours? And what did I say about it? Nothing. And then…” Golder seemed to be looking for more proof, attempting to bring everything together in his mind, but then he brushed it all aside with a shrug of the shoulders.

  “Business,” was all he murmured, as if he were naming some terrifying god…

  Marcus fell silent. He took a packet of cigarettes from the table, opened it, and carefully struck a match. “Why do you smoke these disgusting Gauloises, Golder, when you’re as rich as you are?”

  Golder watched Marcus’s shaking hands as if he were contemplating the final death throes of a wounded animal.

  “I need the money, David,” Marcus suddenly said in a different tone of voice, the corner of his mouth contorting into a grimace. “I… I’m really desperate for money, David. Couldn’t you… let me make just a little? Don’t you think that…”

  “No!”

  Golder shook his fist in the air. He saw the pale hands clasp each other, the clenched fingers digging their nails into the flesh.

  “You’re ruining me,” Marcus said finally, in an odd, hollow voice.

  Golder said nothing, refusing to look up. Marcus hesitated, then quietly pushed back his chair.

  “Good-bye, David,” he said, and then shouted suddenly, “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” said Golder. “Good-bye.”

  GOLDER LIT A cigarette, but put it out when he started choking on the first puff. His shoulders were wracked by a nervous, asthmatic cough, which filled his mouth with bitter phlegm. Blood rushed to his face, normally deathly pale and waxy, with dark circles under the eyes. Golder was an enormous man in his late sixties. He had flabby arms and legs, piercing eyes the colour of water, thick white hair, and a ravaged face so hard it looked as if it had been hewn from stone by a rough, clumsy hand.

  The room reeked of smoke and that smell of stale sweat that is particular to Parisian apartments in summer when they have been left empty for a long time.

  Golder swivelled around in his chair and opened the window. For a long while, he looked out at the Eiffel Tower, all lit up. Its red glow streamed like blood down the cool dawn sky. He thought of Golmar. Six shimmering gold letters that tonight would be turning like suns in four of the world’s greatest cities. GOLMAR: two names, his and Marcus’s, merged together. He pursed his lips. “Golmar… David Golder, alone, from now on…”

  He reached for the notepad beside him and read the letterhead:

  GOLDER & MARCUS

  Buyers and Sellers of Petroleum Products

  Aviation Fuel. Unleaded, Leaded, and Premium Gasoline.

  White-Spirit. Diesel. Lubricants.

  New York, London, Paris, Berlin

  Slowly he crossed out the first line and wrote, “David Golder, ” his heavy handwriting cutting into the paper. For he was finally on his own. “It’s over, thank God,” he thought with relief. “He’ll go now…” Later on, after Teisk granted the concession to Tubingen, he would be part of the greatest oil company in the world, and then he would easily be able to rebuild Golmar.

  Until then… He quickly scribbled down some figures. These past two years had been especially terrible. Lang’s bankruptcy, the 1922 Agreement… At least he would no longer have to pay for Marcus’s women, his rings, his debts… He had enough to pay for without him. How expensive this idiotic lifestyle was! His wife, his daughter, the houses in Biarritz and Paris… In Paris alone he was paying sixty thousand francs in rent, taxes. The furniture had cost more than a million when he’d bought it. For whom? No one lived there. Closed shutters, dust. He looked with a kind of hatred at certain objects he particularly detested: four lamps, Winged Victories in bronze with black marble bases; an enormous square inkstand, decorated with gilt bees—empty. It all had to be paid for, and where was he supposed to get the money?

  “The fool,” he growled angrily. ” ‘You’re ruining me!’ So what? I’m sixty-eight… Let him start over again. I’ve had to do it often enough…”

  He turned his head sharply towards the large mirror above the cold fireplace, looking uneasily at his drawn features, at the mottled bluish patches on his pale skin, and the two folds sunk into the thick flesh around his mouth like the drooping jowls on an old dog. “I’m getting old,” he grumbled bitterly. “Yes, I’m getting old…” For two or three years now he’d been getting tired more easily. “I absolutely must get away tomorrow,” he thought. “A week or ten days relaxing in Biarritz where I can be left in peace, otherwise I’m going to collapse.” He took his diary, propped it up on the table against a gold-framed photograph of a young girl and started leafing through it. It was full of names and dates, with 14 September underlined in ink. Tubingen was expecting him in London that day. That meant he could have barely a week in Biarritz … Then London, Moscow, London again, New York. He let out an irritated little moan, stared at his daughter’s picture, sighed, then looked away and began rubbing his painful eyes, burning from weariness. He had got back from Berlin that day, and for a long time now he hadn’t been able to sleep on the train as he used to.

  He stood up to head for the club, as always, but then realised it was after three o’clock in the morning. “I’ll just go to bed,” he thought. “I’ll be on the train again tomorrow…” He noticed a stack of letters that needed signing piled on the desk. He sat down again. Every evening he read over the letters his secretaries had prepared. They were a bunch of asses. But he preferred them that way. He thought of Marcus’s secretary and smiled: Braun, a little Jew with fiery eyes, who had sold him the plans for the Amrum deal. He started to read, leaning very far forward under the lamp. His thick white hair used to be red, and a hint ofthat burning colour still remained at his temples and at the back of his neck, glowing, like a flame half hidden beneath the ashes.

  THE TELEPHONE NEXT to Golder’s bed broke the silence with its long, shrill, interminable ringing, but Golder didn’t wake up: in the mornings, he slept as deeply and heavily as a dead man. Finally he opened his eyes with a low groan and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello, hello…”

  He carried on shouting “Hello, hello,” without recognising his secretary’s voice, until he heard the words, “Dead, Monsieur Golder… Monsieur Marcus is dead…”

  He said nothing. “Hello, can you hear me?” the voice continued. “Monsieur Marcus is dead.”

  “Dead,” Golder repeated slowly, while a strange little shiver ran down his spine. “Dead… It isn’t possible …”

  “It happened last night, Monsieur… on the Rue Chaba-nais… Yes, in a brothel… He shot himself in the chest. They’re saying that…”

  Golder gently placed the receiver between the sheets and pressed the blanket over it, as if he wanted to smother the voice that he could still hear droning on like some enormous trapped fly.

  Finally, there was silence.

  Golder rang the bell. “Run me a bath,” he said to the servant who came in with the post and bre
akfast tray, “a cold bath.”

  “Shall I pack your dinner jacket, Sir?”

  Golder frowned nervously. “Pack? Oh, yes, Biarritz … I don’t know. I may be going tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, I don’t know…”

  “I’ll have to go to his house tomorrow,” he muttered. “The funeral will be on Tuesday no doubt. Damn…” He swore quietly. The servant, in the adjoining room, was filling the bath. Golder swallowed a mouthful of hot tea, opened some letters at random, then threw the rest on the floor and stood up. He sat down in the bathroom, closed his dressing-gown over his knees and absent-mindedly twisted the tassels on his silk belt as he watched the flowing water with an engrossed, mournful look on his face.

  “Dead… dead…”

  Little by little, a feeling of anger grew within him. He shrugged his shoulders. “Dead… is death the answer? If it were me …” he muttered with hatred.

  “Your bath is ready, Sir,” said the servant.

  Once alone, Golder went up to the bathtub, stretched his hand down into the water and left it there; all his movements were extraordinarily slow and hesitant, incomplete. The cold water froze his fingers, his arm, his shoulder, but he lowered his head and didn’t move, staring dumbly at the reflection of the electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling as it shone and shimmered in the water.

  “If it were me … ” he said again.

  Old, forgotten memories were resurfacing from deep within his mind. Dark, strange memories … A whole harsh lifetime of struggle … Today, riches, tomorrow, nothing. Then starting over … And starting over again … Oh yes, if he’d ever considered that, well, honestly, he would have been dead long ago. He sat up straight, absent-mindedly shook the water off his hand and leaned against the window, holding his freezing hands towards the warmth of the sun. He shook his head and said out loud, “Yes, honestly, in Moscow for example, or even in Chicago…” and his mind, unaccustomed to dreaming, conjured up the past in dry, brief little snapshots. Moscow … when he was nothing more than a thin little Jew with red hair, pale, piercing eyes, worn-out boots, and empty pockets… He used to sleep rough on benches, in the town squares, on dark autumn nights like these, so cold… Fifty years later, he could still feel in his bones the dampness of the thick white early morning fog, a fog that clung to his body, leaving a sort of stiff frost on his clothes … Snowstorms, and in March, the wind …