David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) (44 page)

“All in all,” he remarked, “you’re something of a mystery.”

“Why?” I said.

It gave me a certain sense of pleasure to ask.

“Why?” he repeated slowly. “I don’t know.”

At that very moment, I knew that some doubt had crossed his mind. It was unbelievable to see how truly bizarre and obtuse
these people were: they deported and imprisoned masses of innocent people and poor fools, but the really dangerous enemies of the regime slipped through their nets unharmed. Yes, at that moment, and for the first time, Courilof was suspicious. His uneasiness probably affected his reasoning. But without a doubt, he thought he had nothing left to fear; or perhaps he felt the same things towards me as I did towards him: understanding, curiosity, a vague kind of fraternity, pity, scorn … How could I know? Perhaps he wasn’t thinking anything of the sort… He shrugged his shoulders slightly and said nothing.

We went back to the house to have lunch with Marguerite Eduardovna, the three of us sitting around a table that was meant for twenty. During the meal, he was so irritable it verged on madness. One day, he smashed one of the Sevres vases that decorated the table; he threw it at the butler’s head, I don’t remember why now. It was pink, made of soft-paste porcelain, and it held the last small trembling roses of summer, yellow and almost faded, deliciously fragrant. When the butler had silently collected up all the debris, Courilof was ashamed; he gestured for him to go away. Then he shrugged his shoulders, looked at me and said: “We can be so childish!”

He sat motionless for a long time, his eyes lowered.

In the afternoon, he would go and lie down, spending long hours on his settee, reading. He called for stacks of books, arm-fuls of them, French novels whose pages he meticulously cut to pass the time. He would slip the blade between the pages, smooth them out, then cut them apart with little slicing movements. Lost in thought, he never made a sound. I often saw him staring into space with his wide, sad eyes, holding a large book open in front of him. Then he would look at the last page, sigh, and throw the book down.

“I’m bored,” he said over and over again, “I’m so bored!”

He’d start pacing back and forth in his bedroom, a room filled with many icons. When his wife came in, his face would light up, but almost immediately, he’d look away and start wandering aimlessly from room to room again.

The few people who called to see him were sent away. He was reading the
Lives of the Saints,
I recall, and pretended it was some
consolation to him. But since he was so attached to worldly possessions, to physical pleasures, he also dismissed religious books with a sigh.

“God will forgive me … We are all just poor sinners.” He had pretensions of being European, so found his involuntary sighs more disconcerting than anyone else did.

There was only one thing he never tired of, one thing that he really loved. He gestured for me to sit down opposite him: he had some tea and lamps brought in. It already felt like autumn; a misty fog fell on to the Iles at dusk, dense and full of shadows. Then the Killer Whale would tell me about his past. For hours at a time, he would talk about himself: his services to the Monarchy, his family, his childhood, his opinions about the role of a great politician. But on the rare occasions he deigned to talk about men he’d known, he surprised me. He found a bitterly funny way of describing them. He talked about their petty intrigues, the misappropriation of public funds, their thefts and betrayals, so commonplace in the city and at court, a bizarre crowd who amused me.

I think it’s because of Courilof that I was later able to give some good advice to the rulers of the time to help them manage things. This was when the glorious days of the Revolution were over and we had to deal with Europe and the growing demands of the people. He taught me more than he ever knew, my old enemy; and it was just the opposite of what he thought he was teaching me …

Often I wasn’t even listening to what he said, just to his tone of voice, tinged with bitterness and venom; I watched his ghostly pale, haughty face, already marked by death and devoured by envy and ambition. A small mahogany table with two old-fashioned lamps and painted metal shades sat between us. Their flames burned peacefully in the dark. You could hear the policemen, ever present like me, even though they no longer had a minister to protect; they made their rounds beneath the windows, whispering softly as they passed each other in the night.

“Men… men,” repeated Courilof. “Ministers, princes, what puppets they all are! True power lies in the hands of madmen
or children, who don’t even know they have it. The rest of humanity is chasing after shadows!”

That was exactly how he spoke: he was a man who lacked simplicity, but also managed to speak the truth.

Then came another silent dinner. Afterwards, Marguerite Eduardovna played the piano as we paced back and forth through the great reception room: the sparkling wooden floors reflected the lights from the chandeliers, all lit up for his solitary stroll. Sometimes, he would stop and shout in frustration: “Tomorrow I’m leaving!”

And the next day would be exactly the same.

MEANWHILE,
THE TROUBLES
in the capital continued. From the universities, the problems spread to the factories where, in certain provinces, bloody battles broke out once more. Dahl didn’t know how to deal with either the schools or the universities.

One evening, Courilof seemed more animated than usual. As he was saying good night to me, he added: “Don’t go to St. Petersburg tomorrow: the students at the Imperial Secondary Schools intend to present a petition to the Emperor, who is currently at the Winter Palace, in support of the striking workers in the Poutilov factories.”

“What’s going to happen?” I asked.

He laughed curtly. “No one knows anything yet, and His Excellency”—he stressed the words sarcastically, as always when he mentioned his successor—”His Excellency knows even less than anyone. It will end quite simply. The commander at the palace will be caught off guard and will call in the troops. When that happens, power automatically passes to the colonel, and since there will be no lack of protestors to insult the army, the soldiers will be forced to open fire. That’s what will happen,” he said, forcing a little laugh. “That’s where it will all end—with a minister like Baron Dahl who treats the children he’s responsible for as if they were dogs!”

I said nothing.

“It could prove very damaging to him,” Courilof murmured pensively.

I asked why, and Courilof started laughing again and patted me on the shoulder; his large hand was unusually strong.

“So you’re interested in these events, are you? You don’t understand? You really don’t understand?” he repeated. (He seemed enormously amused.) “Do you think the Emperor will be pleased to see dead bodies underneath his windows? Such
things are perfectly acceptable as long as they happen far from view …” (he suddenly frowned, no doubt recalling some inconvenient facts), “but not right in front of you, at your home. Do you know what Emperor Alexander I is supposed to have said? ‘Princes sometimes like crime, but they rarely like criminals.’ That’s a good one, don’t you think? And then of course there’s the press; even though they are conveniently censored here, thank God, they still have some influence.”

He went over to his wife and took her arm. “You see, my darling, personally, I am very happy not to be taking such risks, no longer having these problems,” he said, in French, forcing his voice to sound light-hearted and indifferent. “Yes indeed, this has made me feel better! I admit I foolishly allowed myself to fall into a kind of depression. Next week we’ll leave for Vevey, my darling. We shall cultivate our garden. Do you remember the sea gulls by the lake? Unless of course …”

And he drifted off, dreamily. “Those poor children!” he spat, thoughtful and grave. “Now there are truly innocent souls for whom
they
must answer before God.”

He stood silent for a long time, sighed, then took Marguerite Eduardovna’s hand. “Let’s go upstairs, my dear.”

Just then, the bell rang downstairs. He jumped; it was nearly midnight. A servant entered, saying there was a small group of men who didn’t wish to give their names, asking to see him at once. His wife begged him not to let them in.

“They’re anarchists, revolutionaries,” she kept saying, anxiously.

“Let me go with you,” I said to Courilof. “With the two of us and the servants within earshot, we’ll be safe.”

He agreed, doubtlessly to appease his wife: I knew how naturally calm and courageous he was. Still, he suspected something wasn’t right and it made him curious. Whatever the reason, he agreed. The visitors were taken downstairs to the empty office. They apologised for having come so late at night, without having requested an audience. It was a delegation of teachers from the Imperial Secondary Schools; they were pale and shaking as they huddled by the door, afraid to come in, petrified by the heavy, fixed stare of the Killer Whale. As for my Courilof, he proudly
stood up straight, as tall as a peacock. He let his hand drop on to the desk in his usual way; it was a large, powerful hand. It was white and freckled, adorned with a large gemstone ring, a garnet that caught the light and gleamed blood-red.

The teachers were old and frightened. They said they’d come to try to prevent something terrible from happening. The Minister of Education had refused to see them. A scornful little smile hovered over Courilof’s lips… They had come to beg His Excellency to please warn Dahl, whom they believed was indebted to Courilof as his former colleague, his friend. (They had no idea that Dahl had stolen the post from Courilof; in the city, the official story was that Courilof had to retire for health reasons; the secrets of the gods were carefully guarded. The important people at the court knew every detail of what had happened, naturally, but the secondary schools teachers were hardly important people there.) Just as Courilof had said, a delegation of young people had decided to present a request to the Emperor, asking him to pardon the strikers who’d been deported. The teachers feared the children would be mistaken for strikers and shot. (Two years later, this is exactly what would happen to the workers led by G. in front of the Winter Palace.)

The longer he listened to them, the paler and more silent Courilof became. This man’s silences had extraordinary power; he seemed frozen into a block of ice.

“What do you want me to do, gentlemen?” he finally said.

“Warn Baron Dahl. He’ll listen to you. Or at least ask him to receive us. You will be preventing something awful, much loss of life.”

They didn’t realise that my Courilofwas thinking of only one thing: how to seize the opportunity, offered to him by fate, to throw his successor into an impossible situation. He could first reclaim his job, then, later on when the moment was right, he would be hailed as the defender and saviour of the Monarchy. I felt I could read his mind. I don’t know why, but I imagined he was quoting
deus ex machina
to himself, in Latin, as he liked to do.

“I cannot do it, gentlemen: what you are asking of me is quite improper. I have retired from public life, not because of my
health, as you thought, but because the Emperor wished it. Go and see Baron Dahl yourself. Insist.”

“But he refused to see us!”

“Well then, gentlemen, what can I do? … I am powerless.”

They begged him. One of them was a pale old man in a black coat. Suddenly he leaned forward and (I can still picture it) grabbed Courilof’s hand and kissed it.

“My son is one of the leaders, Your Excellency; please save my son!”

“You shouldn’t have allowed him to get mixed up in this,” said Courilof, his voice icy and sharp. “Go home and lock your son in.”

The old man gestured in despair. “So you refuse?”

“Gentlemen, I cannot intervene, I repeat, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Quietly they conferred with one another; then they began to all talk at once, imploring this motionless man.

“Their blood will be on your hands,” one of them said, his voice shaking.

“It won’t be the first time,” said Courilof, smiling slightly. “Norwill it be the first time I’ve been held responsible for blood I haven’t spilled.”

They left.

The next day, before they reached the gates of the Winter Palace, the thirty young people were stopped by the army. As the army tried to disperse them, someone grabbed the reins of one of the horses. The Cossack felt his horse rear and thought he was being attacked; he fired. The youngsters responded by throwing stones; the crowd angrily took sides and a shower of stones fell against the bronze gates and the Imperial Eagles that decorated them. The colonel ordered his men to open fire. Fifteen people were killed: students and passers-by (amongst the first shot was the son of the elderly gentleman who had come to beg Courilof’s help), and all right under the Emperor’s windows. The scandal caused by the death of these fifteen victims would rid Courilof of Dahl and return him to his post as Minister of Education.

NATURALLY,
IT
DIDN’T
happen immediately; for a long time, even I knew nothing about it.

The following week, Courilof and his family left for the Caucasus, and I went with them.

Their house was not far from Kislovodsk, at the very edge of the city. From its large, circular wooden balcony, you could see the first foothills of the mountains. It was extremely beautiful, though arid and bare, with the occasional dark cypress tree surrounded by stones and water. In the garden, there were wild rose bushes in bloom; they had twisted branches, spiky thorns, and flowers whose perfume filled the evening air. Just like here in France, they grew in clusters, beneath the windows.

The air was too chilly for me; I couldn’t stop coughing.

One day, Dahl arrived. He seemed perfectly calm. He told us he’d come to relax in the spa at Kislovodsk, take the waters of Kislovodsk, and that the moment he’d arrived, he’d immediately cometo see “his dear friend.” During the meal, he openly told all of us how he had been unfairly blamed for the events in August.