David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (15 page)

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.

“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.

In the enormous kitchen, spacious enough for five servants in the past, there was now just one elderly maid, hunched over the stove, who prepared his meals. She watched with weary resignation as he paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, in a dressing-gown he’d bought years before in London whose purple silk was so faded and torn that tufts of the white wool lining were sticking through the fabric.

Breakfast over, he would have an armchair and footstool placed by the sitting-room window, and he would sit there all day long, playing solitaire on a tray on his lap. If it was sunny, he would visit the chemist’s in the next street, weigh himself, and walk slowly back home, leaning heavily on his walking stick and stopping every fifty paces to catch his breath, his left hand carefully holding closed the ends of his woollen scarf, which was wrapped twice around his neck and fastened with a pin.

Then, when night began to fall, Soifer would come round to
play cards. He was an old German Jew Golder had known in Silesia; they’d lost touch but then run into each other a few months earlier. Bankrupted by inflation, Soifer had played the money markets and won everything back again. In spite ofthat, he had retained a mistrust of money, and the way revolutions and wars could transform it overnight into nothing but worthless bits of paper. It was a mistrust that seemed to grow as the years passed, and little by little, Soifer had invested his fortune in jewellery. He kept everything in a safe in London: diamonds, pearls, emeralds—all so beautiful that even Gloria had never owned any that could compare. Despite all this, his meanness bordered on madness. He lived in a sordid little furnished room, in a dingy street near Passy, and would never take taxis, even when a friend offered to pay. “I do not wish,” he would say, “to indulge in luxuries that I can’t afford myself.” Instead, he would wait for the bus in the rain, in winter, for hours at a time, letting them go by one after the other if there was no room left in second class. All his life, he had walked on tiptoe so his shoes would last longer. For several years now, since he had lost all his teeth, he ate only cereal and pureed vegetables to avoid having to buy dentures.

His yellow skin, as dry and transparent as an autumn leaf, gave him a look of pathetic nobility, the same kind of look that old criminals sometimes have. His head was crowned with beautiful tufts of silvery white hair. It was only his gaping, spluttering mouth, buried in the deep ridges of his face, that inspired a feeling of revulsion and fear.

Every day, Golder would let him win twenty francs or so, and listen to him talk about other people’s business deals. Soifer possessed a kind of dark sense of humour that was very similar to Golder’s and meant that they got along together well.

Much later, Soifer would die all alone, like a dog, without a friend, without a single wreath on his grave, buried in the cheapest cemetery in Paris by his family who hated him, and whom he had hated, but to whom he nevertheless left a fortune of some thirty million francs, thus fulfilling till the end the incomprehensible destiny of every good Jew on this earth.

And so, at five o’clock every day, sitting at a pine table in front
of the sitting-room window, Golderwearing his purple dressing-gown, Soifer with a woman’s black wool shawl draped over his shoulders, the two men played cards. In the silent apartment, Golder’s coughing fits echoed with a strange, hollow sound. Old Soifer moaned about his life in an annoyed, plaintive tone of voice.

Beside them, hot tea sat in two large, silver-bottomed glasses, part of a set that Golder, long ago, had ordered from Russia. Soifer would put his cards down on the table, automatically shielding them with his hand, take a sip of tea and say, “You know that sugar is going to go up again?” Then: “You know that the Banque Lalleman is going to finance the Franco-Algerian Mining Company?” And Golder would look up abruptly with an eager, lively expression, like a flame that flickers up from the ashes and then dies down again.

“That should be a pretty good deal,” he replied wearily.

“The only good deal is to invest your money in something safe—if there is such a thing—then sit on it and protect it like an old hen. Your turn, Golder…”

They went back to playing cards.

“
HAVE
YOU
HEARD?
” said Soifer as he came in. “Have you heard what they’ve cooked up now?”

“Who?”

Soifer shook his fist at the window, indicating all of Paris.

“First it was income tax,” he continued in a shrill, quivering voice, “soon there will be a tax on rent. Last week I spent forty-three francs on heating. Then my wife went and bought a new hat. Seventy-two francs! And it looks like a pot that’s been turned upside down! I don’t mind paying for something of quality, something that lasts, but that hat… It won’t even last her two seasons. And at her age! What she could do with is a shroud! I would have paid for that with pleasure … Seventy-two francs! In my day, where we lived, we could buy a bearskin coat for that price. My God, if my son ever says he wants to get married, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands. He’d be better off dead, the poor boy, than to have to keep paying for things his whole life, like you and me. And I heard just today that if I don’t renew my identity card right away, I’ll be deported. A miserable, sickly old man! I ask you, where would I go?”

“To Germany?”

“Oh, sure, to Germany,” Soifer grumbled. “Germany can go to hell! You know what happened to me before in Germany, when I had that trouble over providing them with war supplies. No? You didn’t know? Look, I’ve got to get going now, their office closes at four o’clock… And do you know how much it will cost me, for the pleasure? Three hundred francs, my dear Golder, three hundred francs plus their administrative costs, not to mention the time wasted and the twenty francs you always let me win, since we won’t have time to play cards today. Oh, dear Lord! Why don’t you come along with me? It will take your mind off things, it’s nice out.”

“Do you want me to come so I can pay for the taxi?” asked Golder with a smile that twisted his face like a sudden fit of coughing.

“Good heavens,” said Soifer, “I was expecting to take the tram … And you know I never take taxis in order to avoid getting into bad habits… But today, my old legs feel as heavy as lead… And as long as
you
don’t mind throwing your money out of the window?”

They went out together, each of them leaning on a walking stick. Golder listened quietly as his friend explained how a recent sugar deal had just ended in bankruptcy because of some sort of fraud. Soifer rubbed his trembling hands together in an expression of sheer delight as he reeled off figures and the names of the ruined shareholders.

When they left the police station, Golder felt like walking. It was still light; the final rays of the red winter sun lit up the Seine. They crossed the bridge, strolled up a street they chanced upon behind the Hotel de Ville, then along another street that turned out to be the Rue Vieille-du-Temple.

Suddenly, Soifer stopped.

“Do you know where we are?”

“No,” replied Golder, indifferent.

“Right over there, my friend, on the Rue des Rosiers, there’s a little Jewish restaurant, the only one in Paris where they know how to make a good stuffed pike. Come and have dinner with me.”

“You don’t think I’m going to eat stuffed pike,” Golder grumbled, “when I haven’t touched fish or meat in six months?”

“No one’s asking you to eat anything. Just come and pay. All right?”

“Go to hell.”

Nevertheless, he followed Soifer who was limping painfully down the street, breathing in the smell offish, dust, and rotting straw. Soifer turned round and put his arm through Golder’s.

“A dirty Jewish neighbourhood, isn’t it?” he said affectionately. “Does it remind you of anything?”

“Nothing good,” Golder replied darkly.

He stopped and, for a moment, looked up at the houses, laundry hanging from their windows, without speaking. Some children rushed past his legs. He gently pushed them away with his cane and sighed. In the shops, there was hardly anything to buy except second-hand clothes or herring in tubs of brine. Soifer pointed to a small restaurant with a sign written in Hebrew.

“Here it is. Are you coming, Golder? You’re happy to buy me dinner, aren’t you? To make a poor old man happy?”

“Oh, go to hell!” repeated Golder. But he continued to follow Soifer. What difference did it make where he went? He felt more tired than usual.

The little restaurant seemed quite clean. It had brightly coloured paper table-cloths and a shiny brass kettle in one corner of the room. Not a soul in sight.

Soifer ordered a portion of stuffed pike and some horse-radish. With great reverence, he picked up the hot plate and lifted it to his nose. “It smells so good!”

“Oh, for goodness sake, just eat and leave me in peace,” murmured Golder.

He turned round and lifted a corner of the heavy red and white checked curtain. Outside, two men had stopped and were leaning against the window, talking. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Golder could understand by the way they gestured with their hands. One of them was Polish and wore an extraordinary, dilapidated fur hat with earflaps; he had an enormous curly, grey beard that he impatiently stroked, plaited, twirled, and untwisted endlessly, at great speed. The other one was a young boy with red hair that burst out in all directions, like flames.

“I wonder what they sell,” thought Golder. “Hay and scrap iron, like in my day?”

He half closed his eyes. Now, as night began to fall and the tops of the houses were cloaked in shadow and the clatter and creak of a handcart drowned out the sound of the cars on the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, he felt as if he had been transported back in time to the old country, was seeing once again those familiar faces, but distorted, deformed, as in a dream …

“There are dreams like this,” he thought vaguely, “where you see people who have died years before …”

“What are you looking at?” asked Soifer. He pushed away his plate, which still contained the remains of some fish and bits of mashed potato. “Ah, so this is what it’s like to grow old… In the past, I would have happily eaten three portions like this! But now, my poor teeth … I have to swallow without chewing. It gives me heartburn here …” He pointed to his chest. “What are you thinking about?”

He stopped, watched Golder, and shook his head.

“Oy,” he said suddenly, in his inimitable tone ofvoice that was plaintive and ironic at the same time, “Oy, Lord God! They’re happier than we are, don’t you think? Dirty and poor, all right, but does a Jew need much? Poverty preserves the Jews like brine preserves the herrings. I’d like to come here more often. If it weren’t so far, and especially, so expensive—it’s expensive everywhere nowadays—I’d come here every night to have a peaceful meal, without my family, who can all go to hell…”

“We should come here now and again,” murmured Golder.

He stretched out his hands towards the glowing stove that had just been lit; it radiated a heavy smell of heat from its corner.

“At home,” he thought, “a smell like that would make me choke…”

But he didn’t feel sick. A kind of sensual warmth, something he’d never felt before, seeped deep into his old bones.

Outside, a man walked by carrying a long pole; he touched the street-lamp opposite the restaurant and a flame shot out, lighting up a narrow, dark window where washing was hanging above some empty old flower-pots. Golder suddenly remembered a little crooked window just like it, opposite the shop where he’d been born… remembered his street, in the wind and snow, as it sometimes appeared in his dreams.

“It’s a long road,” he said out loud.

“Yes,” said Soifer, “long, hard, and pointless.”

Both of them looked up and for a long while gazed, sighing, at the miserable window, the worn-out clothes beating against the panes of glass. A woman opened the window and leaned out to pull in the washing. She shook it out, then bent forward, took
a little mirror out of her pocket, and used the light from the street-lamp to put on some lipstick.

Golder suddenly stood up.

“Let’s go home … the smell from that oil stove is making me feel sick…”