David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (43 page)

At first Courilof’s composure surprised me. Later on, I realised he hadn’t actually understood the extent of his fall from grace. He undoubtedly believed it would be temporary… or perhaps his deep conviction that he had
behaved like a gentleman,
as he liked to put it, tensing his lips and hissing in that particular way I’d come to know so well, perhaps that was some consolation to him… Nor was he unhappy to have spoken to his beloved sovereign alone, for the first time in his life.

The rebels at court warmly congratulated him on his attitude; he thus enjoyed a brief popularity that deceived him and made his head spin. But it was short-lived. Soon he was alone. Forgotten. From my window, I started to watch him pace back and forth across his room in the evening, for hours on end.
Gradually he became more irritable and miserable, locking himself away in his bedroom, all alone.

One day I went into his room. He was sitting at his desk; he was holding open a bronze box that contained a bundle of papers; he re-read them, then carefully folded them up, as if they were old love letters. They were all the telegrams he’d received when he’d been appointed Minister of Education; he always kept them with him, locked up in his desk.

When he saw me, he became a little flustered. I expected him to send me on my way with the same severe gesture he used to dismiss anyone who annoyed him, the regal turn of his head, as if to say, “What is it? What do you want?” accompanied by an icy, heavy look in his pale blue eyes. But all he did was sadly tense his lips.

“Vanity of vanities, Monsieur Legrand, everything on this earth is but ashes and vanity. One amuses oneself however one can at my age,” he added, trying in vain to sound indifferent. “Honours are the baby rattles of the elderly.”

He thought for a moment and closed the drawer. Finally he gestured to me, inviting me to sit down next to him. He talked to me about Bismarck, whom he’d known. “I met him; I went to visit the great man once; he was dismissed by an ungrateful ruler, like me … He lived alone, with his mastiff dogs… Being idle is deadly…”

He stopped for a moment, sighed: “Power is a delectable poison … To some people,” he hastened to add, “to
other
people … As for me, well, I’ve always been philosophical.”

He forced a slight, ironic smile, the way the dead Prince Nelrode used to do. But his wide, pale eyes stared into mine with a very human look of sadness and anxiety.

July finally came and went. I received my order to kill Courilof on
3
October. The Emperor of Germany was going to visit the Tsar that day. A performance was being given at the Marie Theatre. The bomb had to be thrown as they came outside, not in the theatre itself, to avoid any accidents; still, it had to be early enough for the public and foreign dignitaries to see the assassination happen before their very eyes.

I’d been called to St. Petersburg by Fanny. She was living in a
kind of attic, above the dark canals of the Fontanka, in a room she shared with a family of workers.

I remember how hot it was that summer day and the blinding limestone dust that flew up from the scaffolding, lit up by the blazing sun. We were alone in her room. I told her I wanted to see one of the leaders of the Party. She didn’t reply at first, then stared at me with her narrow, gleaming eyes.

“And just who would you like to see?” she finally asked.

I didn’t know. I insisted.

“Your orders are to see no one.”

I was getting annoyed and insisted again. We parted without having agreed on anything.

A few days passed; she called for me to come to her place again one evening. I crossed the rickety little wooden entrance, past the banister that led to her room; then a man opened her door, came towards me, and shook my hand. A small lamp, hanging on the wall, gave off such a dim light that all I could make out of him was a wide-brimmed hat. His voice was rather strange, dry and sarcastic. His careful economy with words convinced me that he was used to speaking in public.

“We can’t go in,” he said, shrugging lazily, wearily, in the direction of the room. “There’s a woman asleep in there, ill or drunk. I’m …” (He told me his name. This famous terrorist has since died, executed by the Soviets, whose bitter enemy he’d become in 1918.)

It was true; I could hear a woman moaning, interspersed with hiccoughs and groans.

“You wanted to speak to me,” he continued.

And he didn’t even lower his voice in that hallway full of drunks, beggars, prostitutes leaving to go to work, half-naked kids who rushed past like rats. They walked by, staring at us, and pushed us out of the way. The man leaned against the banister and looked down at the dark shaft of the stairwell. That was where Courilof’s fate was to be decided.

I said I didn’t want to kill the minister. He didn’t protest, just sighed wearily, like Courilof did when his secretary came to ask for additional information about a letter he had to finish.

“All right, fine, we’ll find someone else.”

A drunk started singing in one of the filthy hovels. The man banged impatiently on the wall.

“So then… Shall we go downstairs?”

I stopped him again, and then … Ah! I can’t remember what I said any more, but it felt like I was fighting for my brother’s life.

“Why? What’s the point? He’s just a poor fool; if you get rid of him, the next one won’t be any better, nor the one after.”

“I know,” he said, infuriated, “I know. It will start all over again; you know very well we’re not killing a man, we’re killing the regime.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I felt a kind of embarrassment, as usual, afraid I might burst into the kind of pompous speech I so hated. But I simply said, “Do you want to punish someone who is guilty, or remove the cause of the trouble, the problem, someone you consider dangerous?”

He became more thoughtful. He half sat on the flimsy little banister, steadied himself and whistled softly.

“The latter, of course.”

“He’s finished. It’s not been made official. But he’s about to be replaced.”

He swore in a low, muffled voice.

“Again! The animal’s already been caught! And when will it be made official?”

I gestured that I didn’t know.

“Listen,” he said quickly, “the third of October is the date set. Remember that there are going to be strikes in all the universities in October. There will be riots. Many students will die if Courilof remains in power. Ifwe get rid of him, we’ll terrify his successor and save many lives that are far more valuable than that inhuman machine.”

“What if he’s resigned from office by October third?” I asked.

“Well, too bad then,” he replied. “What can we do? He’ll be left alone. Otherwise, you understand, whether it’s you or someone else…”

He didn’t finish. The drunk began singing again in a plaintive voice. Fanny crept into the hallway.

“Leave, now; the spy is coming.”

We went downstairs together. The man walked quickly;
I could see he wanted to leave before me so I wouldn’t be able to see his face, but I got ahead of him and quickly looked at him. He was a young man, but worn out, and with gentle eyes. He looked at me, surprised.

“Listen, in the end,” I said rapidly, “it’s a dirty business; don’t you sometimes wish you could say to hell with it all and get out?”

I don’t know why, but while I was looking at him, I felt something dramatic, something intense in our conversation.

He frowned. “No, I have no pity whatsoever,” he said, responding to my thoughts rather than my words, as if he could read my mind. “Those people deserve no more pity than mad dogs.”

I smiled in spite of myself, recognising Langenberg’s words.

“You don’t understand,” he continued haughtily. “You emerged from your glass cage wrapped in cotton wool; you should have asked your father.”

“It’s got nothing to do with pity,” I said. “It’s more that we seem to lack a kind of sense of humour… as do our enemies, for that matter… Don’t you think?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “You have to make a choice, don’t you? On October third!”

He said it again. I’d got the message and told him so. He smiled, nodding.

“You’ll see; as soon as you have a bomb wrapped in your handkerchief or a gun in your trouser pocket and you see all those beaming people with their medals and fine decorations, the quiver that runs down your spine will be the ultimate reward. I’ve killed two of them.”

He tapped his hat and disappeared. After he left me, I roamed the streets of St. Petersburg, the same three streets around the dark canal, until morning.

ALMOST
IMPERCEPTIBLY,
Courilof changed, growing sombre and anxious. At this time of year, he and his wife normally went to their house in the Caucasus or in France. But this year, it didn’t even occur to him to leave. I don’t know what he was expecting to happen. He didn’t even know himself. Probably he thought that the Emperor would change his mind … or that the world would grind to a halt since, he, Courilof, was no longer a minister.

Finally, towards the end of July, the Emperor’s decree appeared, naming Dahl as successor to Courilof. He bore the blow without flinching, but he seemed to age very quickly. I noticed that his wife’s presence weighed heavily on him. He was even more attentive and polite to her, but you could sense that she was a constant reminder to him of how he had sacrificed his career, and that memory was painful to him. The children, Ina and Ivan, were away—spending the summer somewhere in the Orel region with their aunt, as they did every year.

It seemed as if only my presence was bearable to the Killer Whale. I think it was because I walked very quietly, and he found my silence comforting. I have always walked as lightly and silently as possible.

The house had become as empty and hollow as an abandoned beehive. Quite naturally, no one came to see the disgraced minister any more, afraid of compromising themselves; but what astonished me was the surprise and hurt he seemed to feel because of this. In the morning, he would shout regally, “My post!” It echoed through the entire house.

The servant would bring a few letters. Courilofwould eagerly look at them, then throw them down on his bed, riffle through them and sigh. His face remained impassive; only his fingers trembled slightly.

“No message from the Emperor? Nothing?”

As he asked, he blushed visibly, emphasising his icy expression even more. You could tell that the question itself was painful, but that he couldn’t help asking it. I remember the blood inching slowly up his face, colouring his pale features, right up to his high forehead. He jumped every time the bell rang, every time he heard a carriage passing in the street.

The weather was hot and beautiful. Courilof often went out in the garden early, breathing in the perfume of the flowers, of the great lawns covered in a sea of grass, like a prairie. They were cut at this time of year; you could hear the hissing of the scythe and the peasants’ voices carrying through the peaceful air.

“Cut down just like us, Monsieur Legrand, just like us!” He stopped; looked around him, over towards the gulf, pale grey beneath the blue sky.

“It’s easier to breathe this pure air; it hasn’t been polluted yet by the stench of men. Don’t you agree, Monsieur Legrand?”

He stabbed a leaf with the end of his cane, then raised it up to the light, stopping to look at the grass and the shrubs without seeing them, his heart heavy. He started to say how much the singing birds delighted him, but then his face contorted with pain.

“That’s enough; let’s go back! I can’t bear their chirping! The sun is making my head spin,” he added, pointing to the pale northern sun reflected in the water.

It was the time of day when he used to report to the Emperor.

”
Cincinnatus … Let us begin to work our plough …
” Whenever he mentioned the Emperor or the Empress, the court or the ministers, he let out a short little snigger. As he stood beneath the stinging whip of adversity, this man—whom I had never known to be either spiritual or bitter—now voiced rather cruel and amusing verdicts on both people and things.

“Didn’t you ever come across revolutionary immigrants in Switzerland?” he asked me once.

Fearing a trap, I replied: “No.”

“Fanatics, cranks, villains!”

But, all in all, they scarcely interested him. What counted for him, for his sovereign, for Russia, were the plots of the grand
dukes, the ministers, and, most especially, the conspiracies and schemes of Dahl and his cohorts. He was their victim; he called them “diabolical” and thought they were poisonous. He never spoke to me about it: I wasn’t meant to know anything. I was nothing but an insignificant doctor, unworthy of sharing the destiny and misfortunes of the great men of this world. But in spite of himself, everything he said led back to what had happened to him.

My poor Courilof! I had never been as close to him, never understood him so well, despised him so much, felt as sorry for him as I did on those days, those nights. The pale, clear nights lasted twelve hours on the horizon, then began to darken, for it was August; in this climate it was already autumn, an arid, sad season everywhere, but especially here. I advised him to leave. I talked to him about Switzerland and a house in Vevey, a white house with a climbing red vine, like the Bauds’ house … I drew the most idyllic pictures for him. In vain. He clung to his proximity to the Emperor, to his memories, to the illusion of power.

“Ministers, puppets,” he repeated furiously, over and over again. “An Emperor? No, a saint! God preserve us from such saints on the throne! Everything in its proper place! As for the Empress!”

He stopped, pinching his lips into a scornful pout and sighed deeply. “What I need is something to do … “

He needed something else as well: the illusion of influencing people’s fate. You never get tired of that; otherwise, you’re finished … completely finished… I know that now.

“You’re the only one who’s remained faithful to this old, disgraced man,” he said to me one day.

I made some vague reply. He sighed, then looked at me oddly, in that charming way of his.