David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (18 page)

AT
FIVE O’CLOCK
, the first blasts of the port sirens woke Golder.

He had difficulty picking up his shoes, and there was still no water when he tried the tap on the sink. He rang for the porter and waited a long time, but nobody came. Eventually, he found a little Eau de Cologne in a bottle in his suitcase and rubbed it on his hands and face. Then he got his things together and went downstairs.

Only once he was downstairs did he manage to get a cup of tea. He paid, then left.

Through habit, he started looking around for a taxi. But the town seemed deserted. A cloud of sand, carried inland by the sea breeze, obscured all the buildings. It lay so thick on the streets that there were deep footprints where people had walked past, as if through snow. Golder motioned to a young boy who was silently running barefoot along the middle of the street.

“Can you carry my suitcase to the port? Aren’t there any taxis?”

The child seemed not to understand. But he took hold of the suitcase and walked on ahead.

The houses were all closed, their windows boarded up. There were banks, official buildings, but empty, deserted. On the walls, the outline of the Imperial Eagle remained etched into the stone, like a wound… Instinctively, Golder walked more quickly.

He vaguely recognised certain old, dark alley-ways, the houses made of rickety wood. But it was so silent… Suddenly, he stopped.

They weren’t far from the port. The air had the strong smell of mud and salt. A small, dark shoemaker’s shop, with its iron boot swinging in front of the window, creaking… On the corner opposite, his old lodging house, a place frequented by
sailors and prostitutes… The shoemaker was one of his father’s cousins who had settled in the town; Golder used to go and have a meal with him from time to time. He remembered the place well… He made an effort to try to recall what his cousin looked like. But all he could remember was the sound of his bitter, plaintive voice, probably because it was just like Soifer’s: “Stay here, my boy… Do you think you’re going to find gold on the streets somewhere else? Ha! Life is hard wherever you go.”

Without thinking, Golder started to turn the door handle, then let his hand drop back down to his side. It had been forty-eight years! He shrugged his shoulders, kept walking.

“I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed?” He laughed bitterly. “Who knows? Imagine Gloria doing the housework and frying potato pancakes in goose fat on Friday night. Life … ” he whispered softly. How odd it was that, after so many years, he should be brought back to this desolate place …

The port. He recognised it as clearly as if he had left the day before. The little customs building, half in ruins. Beached boats buried in the black sand, which was littered with bits of coal and rubbish; watermelon rind and dead animals bobbing in the deep, muddy green water, just as in the past.

He climbed on board a small Greek steamship that used to do the crossing between Batoum and Constantinople before the war. It must have been a passenger boat, for it seemed to have certain amenities. There was a sitting room, a piano. But since the Revolution, it had carried only merchandise—and strange merchandise at that. It was dirty and run-down.

“Thank goodness the crossing won’t take long…” thought Golder.

On the bridge, a few
schouroum-bouroum
in their red skullcaps were sitting on the floor, playing cards. They looked up when Golder walked by. One of them waved a pink glass necklace that was hanging from his arm and smiled: “Buy something, good sir… ” Golder shook his head and gently pushed them aside with his cane. How many times, during his first crossing—a crossing the memory of which clung to him with a strange, tenacious persistence—had he played cards with men just like these, at
night, in some corner of the boat… That was so long ago … They moved back to let him pass. He went down into his cabin and looked with a sigh at the sea through the porthole. The boat was moving. He sat down on his berth, a plank of wood covered with a thin, prickly straw mattress. If the weather held, he would sleep on the bridge. But the wind was blowing fiercely and the boat was being tossed about. Golder looked at the sea with a kind of hatred. He was so weary of this endlessly changing world— the landscape rushing past train and car windows, these waves that roared like animals, the trails of smoke in the stormy autumn sky. Ifonly the horizon could be still until he died … “I’mtired,” he murmured. With that instinctive, nervous gesture of people with a heart condition, he pressed both hands against his chest. He massaged it gently as if it were a child or a dying animal—to encourage the worn-out, stubborn machine that beat so feebly in his old body.

Suddenly, after a particularly strong roll of the ship, he seemed to feel his heart falter, then start beating faster, too fast… At the same time, he was struck by an excruciating pain in his left shoulder. He went pale, sat with his head hanging forward, looking terrified, and waited for a long time. The sound of his breathing seemed to fill the cabin, drowning out the noise of the wind and the sea.

Little by little, the pain eased off, then stopped completely. “It was nothing,” he said out loud, forcing himself to smile. “It’s over.”

He was having difficulty breathing. “Over…” he sighed more quietly.

He tried to stand. Outside, the sky and the sea had grown gradually darker. The cabin was as black as if it were the middle of the night. The only light came from the porthole, a strange green murky glow that was not really light at all. Golder fumbled about for his coat, put it on, then went out. He stretched out his hands in front of him, like a blind man. Each time the sea struck the boat, it shuddered, reeled, and plunged, as if it were about to disappear, dragged down into the water. He grasped the bottom of the little ladder that led to the bridge, and hauled himself up.

“Be careful, Comrade, there’s a strong wind up there!” shouted one of the sailors who came running. Golder could smell the strong odour of alcohol on his breath.

“We’re being tossed about, Comrade …”

“I’m used to it,” Golder grumbled sarcastically.

But he had difficulty making it to the bridge. Great swells of water were crashing against the boat. In one corner, the
schouroum-bouroum
were huddled in a heap underneath a soaking wet tarpaulin, shivering like a mournful herd of frozen cattle. One of them saw Golder, looked up, and shouted a few words in a shrill, plaintive voice that was drowned out in the commotion. Golder gestured that he couldn’t hear him. The man repeated what he’d said louder, tensing up his pale face and rolling his blazing eyes. Then suddenly he succumbed to a bout of seasickness, and fell back on to the deck; he lay motionless on his old sheepskin, amongst the bales of cargo and other men.

Golder walked past them.

Soon he had to stop. He stood still, bent over, like a tree yielding to a violent wind; his face was strained, and on his lips was the sharp, bitter taste of salt and the sea. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t; he was clutching a wet, icy-cold iron railing that was freezing his fingers.

As each wave crashed into the boat, it seemed to sink further, breaking under the weight of the sea; every now and then, a long, hollow, heart-rending groan rose up from its timbers, drowning out the harsh sound of the wind and the waves.

“Well,” thought Golder, “this was all I needed…”

Nevertheless, he didn’t move. With an odd sort of pleasure, he let the storm batter his old body. The sea water, mingling with the rain, soaked his cheeks, his lips; his eyelashes and hair were caked with salt.

Suddenly, he heard a voice shouting loudly, very close to him, but the wind drowned out the words. Struggling to look up, he vaguely made out the shape of a man, doubled over, hanging on to the rail with both arms.

A wave crashed into Golder, breaking at his feet. He could feel the water filling his eyes and mouth. He quickly jumped back. The other man followed him. With the storm knocking
them against the wall with each step, they managed to stagger below deck.

“What horrible weather …” the man murmured in Russian, sounding terrified. “Dear God, what horrible weather…”

It was pitch black, and all Golder could see was a kind of long overcoat dragging along the floor, but he recognised the lilting accent all too well.

“Is this your first crossing?” he asked. “You’re a Yid?”

The man laughed nervously but seemed cheered. “Yes,” he murmured. “You too?”

“Me too,” said Golder.

Golder had sat down on the old, tattered velvet settee fixed to the wall. The man remained standing in front of him. With numb hands, Golder fumbled in his jacket pocket for his cigarette case, opened it, and held it out. “Have one.”

When he lit the match, he looked up for a moment and studied the face of the man bending towards him; he was young, barely more than a teenager, pale, with a long, sad nose, curly black woolly hair and enormous, anxious eyes.

“Where are you from?”

“Kremenets, Sir, in the Ukraine.”

“I’ve been there,” murmured Golder.

In the past, it had been a miserable village where black pigs had rolled about in the mud with Jewish children. It probably hadn’t changed much.

“So, you’re leaving? For good?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why are you leaving now? I know why we left in my day!”

“Ah, Sir,” said the little Jew with an accent that was comical and tragic both at the same time, “do things ever change for people like us? I’m an honest young man, I am, Sir, and yet I just got out of prison two days ago. And why? Because an order came through to take some boxes of Montpensiers—you know, those candied fruits?—from the south to Moscow. It was summer and stifling hot; of course everything melted in the freight cars. When I got to Moscow they were dripping through the crates. But was that my fault? I spent eighteen months in prison for that. I’m free now. I want to go to Europe.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen, Sir.”

“Ah…” said Golder slowly. “About the same age as me, when I left.”

“Are you from here?”

“Yes.”

The young man fell silent. He smoked with obvious pleasure. In the darkness, Golder could see his hands, lit up by the cigarette; they were shaking.

“Your first crossing…” Golder said again. “So where are you going?”

“Paris, to start with. I have a cousin who’s a tailor in Paris. He moved there before the war. But as soon as I have enough money, I’m going to New York! Yes, New York!” he repeated excitedly.

But Golder wasn’t listening. Instead, he observed, with a kind of sad, poignant pleasure, the way the boy in front of him moved his hands and shoulders; the way his whole body trembled incessantly as he tripped over his words in his eagerness to speak. That feverish desire, that nervous energy… he too had once possessed them: the hungry exuberance so particular to young people of his race. All that was so long ago now…

“You know you’re going to starve to death, don’t you?” he said sharply.

“Oh, I’m used to that…”

“Yes… But over there, it’s harder…”

“What’s the difference? It won’t be for long…”

Golder suddenly burst out laughing, a laugh as dry and sharp as a whip.

“So that’s what you think, do you? Well, you’re a fool! It lasts for years, years … And after that, to tell the truth, it’s hardly any better…”

“After that…” the boy whispered passionately, “after that you get rich…”

“After that,” replied Golder, “you die, alone, like a dog, the same way you lived…”

He stopped talking and threw back his head with a stifled moan. Once again he felt that excruciating pain around his shoulder, and his aching heart seemed to stop beating…

“You don’t look well…” he heard the boy say. “Is it seasickness?”

“No,” said Golder, his voice weak and stuttering. “No … it’s my heart…”

He was having trouble breathing; it hurt him to speak. But what did the past,
his
past, matter to this little fool anyway? Life was different now… easier. Besides, he didn’t really give a damn about this little Jew, for God’s sake …

“For someone who’s been through as much as I have, my boy, seasickness and foolish things like that… So, you want to get rich?”

He lowered his voice.

“Take a good look at me. Do you think it’s worth it?”

He’d let his head fall forward on to his chest. For a moment, he felt as if the noise of the wind and the sea were fading away into the distance, merging into a kind of chant… Then, suddenly, he heard the terrified voice of the boy shouting, “Help!” He stood up, staggered forward, then stretched both arms up, clutching at the air, the void. Then he collapsed on to the floor.

SOME
TIME LATER
he came round, as if pulled out of deep, dark water. He was semiconscious, stretched out on his cabin bed. Someone had opened his shirt and slipped a rolled-up overcoat underneath his head. At first, he thought he was alone. Then, when he began feverishly to look around the room, he heard the voice of the little Jew behind him.

“Sir… ” he whispered.

Golder tried to raise his hand. The boy leaned towards him. “Oh, Sir! Are you feeling better?”

Golder moved his lips as if he had forgotten the shape and sound of human speech. Finally, he managed to murmur, “Light.”

The light was switched on, and he sighed in pain. He moved, and gave a moan. Instinctively he reached for his chest, to touch his heart, but his heavy hands fell back down to his sides. He muttered a few confused words in a foreign language, and then seemed to come round completely. He opened his eyes. “Go and get the captain,” he said, his voice strangely clear.

The boy went out. Golder was alone. He groaned slightly when a particularly strong wave hit the boat. But the rolling gradually subsided. Sunlight shone in through the porthole. Golder, exhausted, closed his eyes.

When the Greek captain, a large drunken man, came in, Golder appeared to be asleep.

“What’s going on? Is he dead?” the captain asked, swearing.

Golder slowly turned his head towards the captain’s hollow, pale face, with its pinched, white lips.

“Stop the boat… ” he whispered.

When the captain didn’t reply, he said it again, louder: “Stop. Do you understand?”

Golder’s eyes, half hidden beneath his quivering eyelids,
burned so fiercely that the captain was confused; he shrugged his shoulders: “You’re crazy.”

“I’ll pay you … I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”

“Mad,” the captain growled. “He’s on his way out… I’d bet my own life on it… What did I do to deserve a passenger like this?”

“Back to shore…” Golder mumbled, then, “Do you want me to die here all alone, like an animal? Bastard…” And then something no one could make out.

“Isn’t there a doctor on board?” the boy asked. But the captain had already left. The young lad went over to Golder who was panting desperately.

“Try to be patient,” he whispered softly. “We’ll soon be in Constantinople … We’re moving quickly now … The storm has stopped. Do you know anyone in Constantinople? Do you have any relatives there? Anyone at all?”

“What?” murmured Golder. “What was that?”

He finally seemed to understand, but all he kept saying was “What?” over and over again. Then he fell silent.

The boy continued whispering anxiously: “Constantinople … It’s a big city … they can look after you there … you’ll soon get well… Don’t be afraid.”

But at that moment, he realised that Golder was dying. For the first time, the hollow sound of death rose from his tortured chest.

It went on for nearly an hour. The boy was shivering. Even so, he didn’t leave. He listened to the air reverberating in the dying man’s throat with a deep, husky groan, like some mysterious force, as ifan alien being had already taken over his body.

“It won’t be long now,” he thought. “Then it will all be over. I’ll leave him then … I don’t even know his name, for God’s sake!”

Then he looked over at the wallet stuffed full of English money that had fallen to the floor when he had carried him over to the bed. He bent down, picked it up, looked inside, then sighed, and holding his breath, slipped it gently into Golder’s open hand—a swollen, heavy, icy hand, the hand of a corpse.

“Who knows? That way…Maybe he’ll come round for a
moment before he dies. He might want to give me this money … Who knows? Who can know? I’m the one who’s stayed with him. He’s all alone.”

He began to wait. The sea grew calmer as night fell. The boat glided calmly along. The wind had dropped. “It will be a beautiful night,” the boy thought.

He stretched out his hand to touch the wrist dangling in front of him; the heart was beating so faintly that the sound of the watch, with its leather strap, almost drowned it out. Golder was still alive, though. The body is reluctant to die. He was alive. He opened his eyes. He said something. But the air was still growling in his chest with a sinister, chilling sound, like flood waters receding. The boy leant over him, listening intently. Golder said a few words in Russian; then suddenly the forgotten language of his childhood unexpectedly spilled from his lips, and he started speaking Yiddish.

He spoke quickly, in a strange, mumbling voice that was interrupted now and again by long, hoarse wheezing. Sometimes he would stop, slowly bringing his hands to his throat, as if to lift some invisible weight. Half of his face was paralysed, the eye already clouded over and staring. But the other eye was alive, piercing. Sweat poured down his cheeks. The boy wanted to wipe it away. “Never mind…” Golder groaned, “There’s no point… Listen. In Paris, you must go to Maitre Seton, Rue Albert, number twenty-eight. You must tell him that Golder is dead. Say it. Say it again. Seton, Maitre Seton, lawyer. Give him everything in my suitcase and wallet. Tell him I want him to do whatever he thinks best… for my daughter… Then you must go to see Tubingen … Wait.”

He was panting. His lips were moving, but the boy couldn’t understand what he was saying. He leaned so far over him that he could smell the dying man’s breath, the fever coming from Golder’s mouth.

“Hotel Continental. Write it down,” Golder finally whispered. “John Tubingen. Hotel Continental.”

The boy hurriedly took an old letter from his pocket, tore off the back of the envelope, and wrote down the two addresses.

“You will tell him that Golder is dead,” he ordered, his voice
fading, “that I beg him to look after my daughter’s interests … that I trust him and …”

He stopped. His eyes were darting about, their light edging towards darkness.

“And… No. Just that. That’s all. Yes, that’s fine.”

He looked at the bit of paper that the young boy was holding in his hand.

“Give it to me … I’ll sign it… That would be best…”

“I don’t think you’ll manage it,” said the boy. Nevertheless, he took Golder’s hand and slipped the pencil between his weak fingers.

“I don’t think you’ll manage it,” he said again.

“Golder…” the dying man whispered, “David Golder…” with a kind of madness and terrified determination—the name, the syllables that formed it, sounding as incomprehensible to him as the words of some unknown language… Nevertheless, he managed to sign.

“I’ll give you all the money I have with me,” he whispered, “but you must swear to do everything exactly as I’ve said.”

“Yes, I swear it.”

“Before Almighty God,” said Golder.

“Before Almighty God.”

A sudden convulsion ran through his face, and blood started pouring from the corners of his mouth on to his hands. His rattled breathing eased.

“Sir, can you still hear me?” the boy asked fearfully.

The evening light pouring in from the porthole fell straight on to Golder’s face. The boy shuddered. This time it really was the end. The wallet remained open in the outstretched hand. He grabbed it, counted the money, slipped it into his pocket, then put the envelope with the two addresses under his belt.

“Is he finally dead?” he thought.

He reached out towards Golder’s open shirt, but his hands were shaking so violently that he couldn’t manage to feel whether the heart was still beating.

He left him there. He walked backwards towards the door on tiptoe, as if he were afraid to waken him. Then, without looking back, he ran out.

Golder was alone.

He had the still, frozen look of a corpse. But death had not claimed him all at once, like a wave. He had felt himself losing his voice, the heat of life, consciousness of the man he had once been. But right until the end, he could see. He watched as the light of the setting sun spilled over the sea, saw how the water sparkled.

And, deep from within his memory, until he drew his final breath, certain images continued to flash before him, fainter and more indistinct as death drew nearer. For a moment, he thought he was actually touching Joyce’s hair, her skin. Then she seemed to pull away, to abandon him, as he plunged deeper into darkness. One last time, he thought he could hear her laugh, light and sweet, like a bell ringing in the distance. Then she was gone. He saw Marcus. Certain faces, vague shapes, as if carried along by the water at dusk, would swirl around for a moment, then disappear. And, as he reached the end, all he could see was a shop, lit up, on a dark street, a street from his childhood, a candle set behind an icy window, the night, snow falling, and himself… He could feel snowflakes on his lips, which melted with the taste of ice and water so familiar to him from the past. And he could hear someone calling: “David, David…” A voice hushed by the snow, the low, dark sky … A small voice that suddenly grew fainter and faded away, as if heading in a different direction. It was the last sound he was to hear on this earth.