David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) by Irène Némirovsky Read Free Book Online Page A

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 concessionto 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,