David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (35 page)

I carefully returned to the area around his liver; I thought I could feel an abnormal growth, but he stopped me, growing even paler: “Don’t, please,” he said.

He pointed to the right side of his body. “Here, over here. There’s a sharp pain, like someone’s cutting me with a razor.”

The way he’d moved had obviously caused him more pain. He groaned, angrily clenching his teeth: he was so accustomed to controlling everything with certain gestures, a certain look, that he unconsciously used the same methods when dealing with illness and death.

A little while later, he seemed calmer and started talking again. He spoke quietly, said his life was difficult and that he felt very tired. He sighed several times, waving his large hand about. It was shaking slightly.

“You don’t understand, you don’t know this country, but we’re going through hard times,” he said. “Everyone’s authority has been weakened. People loyal to the Emperor have a heavy burden to bear.”

The longer he spoke, the more he began to use pompous and affected language. There was a strange contrast between his moralistic words and the old, weary expression on his face, where you could still see tears in his eyes from the pain he was suffering.

He stopped talking. “Go and get some rest, Marguerite,” he whispered to his wife.

She gave him a long kiss on the forehead and went out.

I followed her, and as I walked past her, I looked at her face with curiosity.

“He has a problem with his liver… doesn’t he?” she asked with a look of fear and anguish on her exhausted face.

“Undoubtedly.”

She hesitated, then said quietly: “You’ll see, that Langenberg … These doctors, these Russians, I don’t trust them… If he weren’t a minister, things would certainly be very different! But they hide behind each other so no one takes any responsibility. They’re afraid, they’re never around when you need them!”

She spoke quickly, in a guttural Parisian accent, half swallowing her words. She shook her odd-looking golden hair, staring at me with wide, tired eyes. “Are you French?”

“No, Swiss.”

“Ah!” she said. “That’s a shame.” She thought for a moment in silence. “But… you do know Paris?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m from Paris,” she said, looking at me with pride. And her eyes and teeth automatically lit up with a dazzling smile. “I’m a Parisian!”

We’d reached the staircase. I stood back to let her pass; she gathered up her flowing robe, placed her foot on the first step— it was still pretty, shapely with a high arch, and she was wearing gold, high-heeled slippers. She was about to go up the stairs when a servant, who was walking through the hallway, dropped a tray full of porcelain.

I could clearly hear the shatter of crockery and the young girl’s nervous, shrill scream. Madame Courilof, stiff and white as a sheet, seemed frozen to the spot. I tried to reassure her but she wasn’t listening to me; she just stood there, pale and motionless. Only her lips quivered, turning her face into a grotesque grimace that was horrible to behold.

I opened the sitting-room door, pointed to the servant kneeling on the floor, cleaning up the shards. Only then did a bit of colour return to her cheeks.

She sighed deeply and went upstairs without saying a word. On the landing, as we were parting, she forced herself to smile. “I live under the constant threat of a terrorist attack,” she said to me. “My husband is well respected by the people … but…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, just lowered her head and walked quickly away. Later on, every time the minister was late, I would see her lean out the window, undoubtedly expecting to see a stretcher with a dead body on it being carried down the path. The sound of any unfamiliar footsteps or voices in the house made her start in the same way; a deathly pallor would come over her face—the miserable expression of a hunted animal waiting for the deadly blow, but not knowing how or when it would come.

After the minister was assassinated, I can recall with perfect clarity hiding in the room next to where his body was laid out. When she came in, she looked almost at peace; her eyes were dry. She seemed free at last.

THE
NEXT
DAY,
Courilof called me in while Langenberg was there.

Langenberg was a large man, Germanic looking and blond, with a sharp, square beard and a cold, ironic, piercing expression behind his spectacles. His cold, damp hands made Courilof’s body shiver nervously when he touched him; I could see it from where I sat at the foot of the bed.

Langenberg seemed to enjoy Courilof’s reaction; he examined his fat, trembling body, turning it over with a smug look on his face that annoyed me.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.”

“Do I have to stay in bed?”

“Just for a few days… not for too long. Do you have a lot to do at the moment?”

“My line of work doesn’t allow for breaks,” said Courilof, frowning.

As he was leaving, Langenberg took me aside. “When you examined him, did you feel a growth?” he said.

I told him I had no doubt about it. He nodded several times. “Yes, yes.”

“It’s cancerous,” I said.

“Well,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t know… It’s certainly a small tumour, that’s for sure … If it weren’t Courilof, if it were some ordinary person …
ein Kerl
… I could operate and remove it, which would give him a few more years to live … But Courilof! The idea of taking on such responsibility!”

We walked up and down the bright little entrance hall in front of the bedroom.

“Does he know?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “What good would that do? He’s consulted any number of doctors, all of whom suspect the same
thing but refuse to operate on him. Courilof!” he repeated. “You don’t understand, my boy, you don’t know this country!”

He prescribed a diet and some treatments and left.

The attack lasted about ten days, and I slept in a room adjoining Courilof’s, so I could hear him if he called for me. This part of the house was constantly full of the minister’s staff, secretaries who brought him files and letters. I watched them wait their turn, shudder and walk over to the closed door; I could hear as they questioned each other in hushed voices: “What kind of a mood is he in today?”

One of them, a low-ranking staff member whose duties required him to see the minister several times a day, surreptitiously crossed himself when he went into the bedroom. He was rather old, as I recall, dignified and well groomed, with a pale face, tense with anxiety. Courilof, however, almost always spoke in the same tone of voice, measured and polite, cold and curt, hardly moving his lips. He was rarely impatient, but when he was, his voice was barely recognisable from where I waited in the next room. He would hurl abuse in a harsh, breathless voice, then stop suddenly, sigh, and wave them away, exclaiming: “Get out! Go to hell!”

One day, I was standing in the doorway when Madame Courilof noticed a female visitor I’d seen on several occasions. She had one of those pale, ordinary faces that are attractive and hold your attention because of certain clear-cut features; her deep-set eyes had a tragic look about them. She stood as straight as a steel beam, and her hair had white streaks in it and rippled over her forehead; she had large teeth, wore a grey cloth dress with a stiff triple collar decorated with lace, all of which gave her a strange and striking appearance. I didn’t know her name, but I’d seen her treated with the utmost respect.

When she saw her, Madame Courilof seemed extraordinarily upset; she hesitated for a moment, then made a deep curtsey. The woman looked at her, studying first her golden hair, then her powdered cheeks, then her mouth. She sighed softly, then raised her eyebrows, shaping her pale lips into a sarcastic little smile.

“Is His Excellency feeling better?” she finally murmured angrily.

“My husband is feeling better, yes, Your Highness,” Madame Courilof replied.

There was a brief silence, and the visitor went into the bedroom. Madame Courilof stood in the middle of the room for a moment, not knowing what to do, then slowly walked away. As she passed by me, she smiled sadly, shrugged her shoulders and whispered, “How oddly these women dress, don’t you think?”

When I looked at her closely, I noticed that she looked exhausted and tears had welled up in her eyes.

On another occasion, I met an elderly man in the minister’s bedroom who was wearing a white summer uniform. I subsequently learned that it was Prince Nelrode. When Courilof spoke to the prince, his voice changed, becoming as deep and soft as velvet.

When I went in, I saw Courilof half sitting in bed; he’d raised himself up with difficulty, so his features looked strained and pale, but he smiled while nodding his head seriously, with a sort of respectful affection. As soon as he noticed me, his expression changed; he let his head fall grandly back on to the pillow and said under his breath: “In just a moment, Monsieur Legrand, just a moment…”

I showed him the injection I had prepared.

The visitor gestured. “I’ll leave you now, my dear friend.”

He looked at me with curiosity, raising his pince-nez to his eyes, then letting them drop down again.

“Yes, Langenberg told me you had a new doctor.”

“A very skilful one,” Courilof said graciously. But then immediately, he gave me a haughty, weary look. “Off you go, Monsieur Legrand, I’ll call for you.”

I was becoming familiar with how Courilof behaved—with his inferiors, his peers, with people he respected or needed. And all his little gestures, his expressions, the words he used—they were all classic, predictable to a certain extent. But every evening when I went into his room and found him alone with his wife, I realised how human nature is truly bizarre.

At night, I would sleep in the same room as he, stretched out on a chaise-longue next to the alcove. I would go up to bed
late. The house was usually filled with the sound of footsteps, voices—but hushed, muted, out of a sense of deferential fear, but still audible, like the humming of a beehive. In the evening, everything was silent. It was cold, as it often is in St. Petersburg at the end of spring, when the icy winds run down from the north along the Neva River. I remember going into the bedroom where all you could hear was the crackling and spitting of logs in the wood-burning stove. A pink lamp burned in the corner of the room. Next to the bed, sitting on a small, low armchair, Madame Courilof held her husband’s hands. When she saw me, she exclaimed in her shrill little birdlike voice: “Eleven o’clock already? Time for you to get some rest, my darling.”

I would sit down with a book by the window. Within a few minutes, they would forget I was there and quietly continue their conversation.

Gradually I would look up and, in the darkened room, study their faces. They seemed different. He would listen to her endlessly, pressing her hand against his forehead, a faint smile hovering at the corner of his lips (those stony lips that hardly seemed designed to smile). Sometimes even I enjoyed listening to her. Not that she was intelligent, far from it, but she had a way of rambling on that was fascinating, almost as if she couldn’t stop herself; it was as relaxing as the steady sound of a brook, or a bird singing. However, she knew when to be silent, how to be still, how to anticipate his every desire, like an old, wise pussycat. Beneath the pinkish light, half hidden in shadow, what stood out were her beautiful eyes and golden hair, its colour fading. Every so often she would give a little cry, shrug her shoulders with the inimitable sound of a woman who has seen all there is to see of life. Sometimes she would let out a kind of involuntary sigh, a cry of: “Oh! My God, the things I’ve seen!” and then she would gently stroke Courilof’s hand.

“My darling, my poor darling…”

For they would forget I was there and would speak to each other endearingly; she would call him “my sweetheart…my love … my darling…” Such words spoken to Courilof, to the “ferocious, voracious Killer Whale,” moved me.

“Oh!” she said one day. “Do you think I don’t know? I never should have listened to you. What was the point of getting married? We were happy as we were.”

Suddenly, she fell silent: she had undoubtedly remembered I was there. But I sat totally still.

She sighed. “Valia, do you remember?” she said softly. “Do you remember how it used to be?”

“Yes,” he replied curtly.

She hesitated, then whispered with a note of fear and hope in her voice, “What if they get their way … Who knows? If you weren’t a minister any more, we could leave the country, we could go and live in France, the two of us.”

When she said that, I saw Courilof’s face change, tense up. Something harsh and inhuman came over his features, a look in his eyes.

“Ah!” he said, his voice pompous and solemn, gradually growing louder as he spoke. “Do you actually think I want to stay in power? It’s a burden. But as long as the Emperor needs me, I will carry out my duties to the end.”

She bowed her head sadly. He was starting to get restless, tossing and turning in the bed.

“I’ll leave you alone,” she murmured.

He hesitated, then opened his eyes and looked at her. “Sing me a little song before you go, anything…” he asked sweetly.

She sang French love songs, old arias from operettas, swinging her legs, swaying her body, moving her head as if she were in the spotlight, undoubtedly as she had been in the past, in the little cabarets in the Iles. And yet, her voice was still beautiful. I turned away so I couldn’t see her, so I could just hear her sweet, sonorous song. Looking at her was horrible; she made me feel pity and scorn. But how did
he
feel when he looked at her? I wondered if she had really once been so beautiful that… There wasn’t a single picture of her in the house.

He watched her without moving, lost in some vague, passionate dream. “Ah! No one sings like that any more!”

I remember he took her hands, almost stroking them, with an affectionate kind of indifference, as if they were the hands of a friend, a child, a wife of many years. But his eyes were closed,
and, little by little, memories from the past surely came back to him. I could see him press her hands more tightly, forcing the blood to rush away from her fingers. She smiled, a bitter, melancholy little grimace on her face.