The Fires of Autumn by Némirovsky Irène

Author:Némirovsky, Irène [Némirovsky, Irène]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Classics, Romance, War
ISBN: 9781101873960
Goodreads: 23568217
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1957-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

4

‘Bernard has a really good position,’ Madame Jacquelain said to Thérèse. ‘He makes up to five thousand francs a month. He’s working for an entire group of American financiers. I’m just a woman, you know, I don’t understand anything about such things, but I think he has a good future. His father was wrong to worry about him. I knew very well that my little boy was someone. “Mama, I’m doing my apprenticeship,” he told me, “I’m learning how to handle important business deals. I’m only an underling now, but little by little …” Little by little, he’ll stand on his own two feet, Thérèse. You’ll see, he’ll get his own car. Even now …’

She stifled a little laugh:

‘If you could see his clothes … He ordered pyjamas from Sulka with his initials embroidered on them. He wears a tuxedo to go out to dinner in town. His father would have been scandalised. Don’t you think he’s becoming very handsome?’

She didn’t wait for Thérèse to reply. They were at the Bruns’ apartment, one Sunday, in the warm little dining room, a few days after the funeral of Adolphe Brun, who had died of an embolism. He had just finished reading the paper; he was about to drink his cup of steaming hot black coffee, brought to him by Thérèse, the coffee he didn’t allow the women to buy for he claimed that their sense of smell was not as sensitive as a man’s and that they were incapable of judging the bouquet of a wine, the smell of fruit, the aroma of Mocha. For example, when Monsieur Brun chose a melon, he would carefully hold it in both hands and smell it, with an expression on his face that was almost loving. Monsieur Brun was a sybarite. He breathed in the aroma of the coffee and smiled. He was rather pale: he hadn’t felt well for a few days now. He turned his kindly face towards Thérèse, suddenly gasped for air, once, then again, convulsively, like a fish out of water, waved his hand about weakly to protest, as if he were saying: ‘But, sir, I don’t owe you anything.’ He let out a sigh and the end of his long moustache fell down on to his chest. He was dead.

Thérèse was sorting out her father’s clothes, kneeling in front of a large trunk with metal bands round it. In the lower compartments were souvenirs of her mother, who had died so young: old-fashioned blouses, silk brocade dresses, some simple but pretty undergarments. All of it had been saved for her, ‘when Thérèse grows up, she’ll wear some of it,’ her grandmother used to say, but she had never dared. She locked the trunk; it would be taken up to the loft where Martial’s suitcase was already stored, with the books he had won as prizes, his medical textbooks, the photographs of his mother and father. ‘Three lives,’ thought Thérèse, ‘three poor lives that have left no trace on earth apart from yellowing books and old clothes.

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