David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn & The Courilof Affair (2008) by Irène Némirovsky Page B

were fewer people; Golder was still playing. “He’s winning now,” she heard someone say. “A while ago, he’d lost nearly a million…”
    The sun was rising. Instinctively she turned her face towards the light, then went back to sleep. It was daytime when she felt someone shaking her; she woke up, held out her hands, then closed them over the crumpled banknotes that her father, standing over her, slid between her fingers. “Oh, Dad,” she murmured joyously, “so it’s true! You really did win?”
    He didn’t move; the stubble that had grown during the night covered his cheeks like thick ash.
    “No,” he said; he was having trouble articulating his words. “I lost more than a million, I think, then I won it back and fifty thousand francs more for you. That’s all. Let’s go.”
    He turned around and walked with difficulty towards the door. She followed him, still barely awake, dragging her large white velvet coat along the floor, her hands overflowing with banknotes. Suddenly, she thought she saw Golder stop, stagger.
    “I must be dreaming…” she murmured. “Has he been drinking?” And at that very moment, his large body collapsed in a strange and terrifying way: he raised both arms in the air, waved them about, then fell to the floor with a deep, dull moan that seemed to rise up as if from the living roots of a falling tree that has been struck right through its heart.

    “ COULD YOU MOVE away from the window, Madame?” whispered the nurse. “You’re in the doctor’s way.”
    Gloria took a few steps back without removing her eyes from the bed. Golder’s heavy head was thrown back and motionless; it made a deep impression in the pillow. “He looks dead,” she thought, and shuddered.
    He seemed completely unconscious. Although the doctor, leaning over his large, inert body, was feeling his pulse, listening to his heart, he didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even groan.
    Nervously twisting her necklace in her hands, Gloria looked away. Was he going to die? “It’s his own fault,” she muttered angrily. “Why did he have to go and play cards? I bet you’re happy now, you fool,” she whispered, as if talking to him directly. “My God, think of all the money this is going to cost! Just let him get better…Just let it not go on for too long. I’ll go mad! What a terrible night I’ve had …”
    She recalled how she had spent the whole night in this bedroom, waiting for Dr. Ghedalia, wondering at every moment whether Golder was going to die, right there, right in front of her eyes… It had been horrible.
    “Poor David… His eyes…”
    He was staring at her again, with that lost look. He was afraid of death. She shrugged her shoulders. All the same, people don’t dielike that… “This isjust what I needed!” she thought, secretly looking at herself in the mirror.
    She made a sudden gesture of frustration and anger, then sat down, straight-backed and stiff, in an armchair.
    Meanwhile, Ghedalia had pulled the sheet back up over Golder’s chest and stood up. He let out a vague moan.
    “Well? What is it?” Gloria asked anxiously. “Is it serious? Will he be well again soon? Will he be ill for a long time? Tell me the truth, I’m begging you, I can take it… “
    The doctor leaned back against his chair, slowly stroked his black beard, and smiled.
    “My dear Madame,” he said in a melodious voice that flowed like milk, “I can see you’re very upset. However, there’s no reason to get in a state… Yes, I know, I know… His fainting like that frightened us, didn’t it? Worried us somewhat… But that’s only natural. After a week or ten days of rest, he’ll be fine. He’s just tired, overworked… Alas, we all grow a little older with each passing day, don’t we, Monsieur? Our arteries aren’t twenty years old any more. We can’t stay young forever…”
    “You see,” Gloria exclaimed passionately, “I knew it all along. The least little thing and you think you’re about