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

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 breakfast 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 atrandom, 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 …