Jezebel (Vintage International) - Softcover

Nemirovsky, Irene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307745465 ISBN 13: 9780307745460

Verlag: Vintage, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

A stunning novel about mothers and daughters, about vengeance, and an aging, still beautiful woman on trial for shooting her lover.
 
In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she remains striking, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting dead her much-younger lover. As the witnesses take the stand and the case unfolds, Gladys relives fragments of her past: her childhood, her absent father, her marriage, her turbulent relationship with her daughter, her decline, and then the final irrevocable act. With the depth of insight and pitiless compassion we have come to expect from the acclaimed author of Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky shows us the soul of a desperate woman obsessed with her lost youth.

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Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and immigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne in Paris, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with David Golder, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. Throughout her lifetime she published widely in French newspapers and literary journals. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. More than sixty years later, Suite Francaise was published posthumously for the first time in 2006.

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A woman took the stand.
 
She was still beautiful, despite her paleness and her drained, distraught appearance. Her sensual eyelashes were pale from crying and her mouth drooped, yet she still looked young. Her hair was hidden beneath a black hat.
 
Out of habit she placed her hand on her neck, no doubt feeling for the long strand of pearls she had worn in the past, but her neck was bare; she faltered; slowly, sadly, she wrung her hands and a soft whisper ran round the breathless crowd of people as they followed her every move.
 
‘The gentlemen of the jury wish to see your face,’ said the Presiding Judge. ‘Remove your hat.’
 
She took it off and, once again, all eyes were drawn to her perfect, small, bare hands.
 
Her chambermaid was seated in the first row with the other witnesses. She moved instinctively as if to rise and help her mistress, then realised where she was; she blushed and looked confused.
 
It was a summer’s day in Paris, but dull and cold; rain streamed down the tall windows; a pallid orange glow lit up the old wooden panelling, the gilded coffered ceiling and the Judges’ red robes. The accused woman looked at the jurors sitting opposite her, then at the courtroom, where people formed clusters in every corner.
 
‘State your full name,’ said the Judge. ‘Place of birth . . . Age . . .’
 
It was impossible to hear what the defendant whispered.
 
‘She said something,’ murmured the women in the courtroom. ‘What was it? Where was she born? . . . How old is she? . . . We can’t hear a thing!’
 
Her hair was fine and light blonde; she was dressed in black. ‘She’s very good-looking,’ one woman whispered, sighing with pleasure, as if she were at the theatre.
 
The members of the public in the standing area could not hear the reading of the charges very well. They passed the morning newspapers around to each other: every front page carried a photograph of the accused woman and an article about the crime.
 
The woman was called Gladys Eysenach. She had been accused of killing her lover, Bernard Martin, aged twenty.
 
The Judge began his interrogation: ‘Where were you born?’
‘Santa-Paloma.’
 
‘That is a village between Brazil and Uruguay,’ the Judge said to the jurors. ‘What is your maiden name?’
 
‘Gladys Burnera.’
 
‘We shall not discuss your past here. I understand that your childhood and early adulthood were spent travelling in distant places, several of which have experienced political unrest and where it has been impossible to make the customary enquiries. We are therefore forced to rely, for the large part, on your own account of your early years. You have made an official statement claiming that you are the daughter of a shipowner from Montevideo, that your mother, Sophie Burnera, left your father two months after they were married, that you were born far from where he lived and that you never knew him. Is that correct?’
 
‘Yes.’
 
‘Your childhood was spent travelling widely. You were married when still virtually a child, as was the custom in your country; your husband was Richard Eysenach, a banker; you lost your husband in 1912. You belong to that transient circle of socialites who have no home or ties in any one particular place. You have stated that since your husband died, you have lived in South America, North America, Poland, Italy, Spain, to name but a few . . . without counting the numerous cruises on your yacht that you sold in 1930. You are extremely wealthy. You inherited your fortune partly from your mother, partly from your dead husband. You lived in France on several occasions before the war and you settled here in 1928. Between 1914 and 1915 you lived near Antibes. That place and time must evoke sad memories for you: it was there that your only child, a daughter, died in 1915. After this misfortune, your life became even more unstable; you wandered from place to place. You had numerous short-lived love affairs in the period following the war, when the social climate was favourable to amorous adventures. Finally, in 1930, through mutual friends, you met Count Aldo Monti, who comes from a well-established, honourable Italian family. He asked you to marry him. The marriage was agreed, was it not?’
 
‘Yes,’ Gladys Eysenbach replied quietly.
 
‘Your engagement was more or less official. Suddenly you decided to break it off. For what reason? You refuse to answer? Presumably you did not wish to relinquish your free, self-indulgent lifestyle and all the advantages it brought. Your fiancé became your lover. Is that correct?’
 
‘Yes.’
 
‘There is no sign of any other affair between 1930 and October 1934. You were faithful to Count Monti for four years. A chance encounter brought you into contact with the person who was to become your victim. He was a boy of twenty, Bernard Martin, son of a former butler and of a poor background. It is this fact that wounded your pride and was undoubtedly the reason why you denied for so long, against all the evidence, that you were having a relationship with the victim. Bernard Martin, a student at the Faculty of Literature, residing at 6 rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, Paris, twenty years of age, managed to seduce you, a woman of the world, who was very beautiful, rich and admired. Well? You have nothing to say? It seems that, bizarrely, scandalously, you gave in to him almost immediately; you corrupted him, gave him money and finally killed him. It is for this crime that you are on trial today.’
 
The defendant slowly clasped her trembling hands together; her nails dug deep into her pale skin; her colourless lips opened slightly, with difficulty, but she uttered not a word, not a sound.
 
‘Tell the gentlemen of the jury how you met him,’ the Judge said once more. ‘You have nothing to say?’
 
‘He followed me one evening,’ she finally said, quietly. ‘It was last autumn. I . . . I can’t remember the exact date. No, I can’t remember,’ she repeated, sounding distraught.
 
‘You gave the date as 12 October in your official statement.’
 
‘Possibly,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t remember . . .’
 
‘Did he . . . proposition you? Come now, answer me. I understand that such an admission must be painful to you. You went home with him that very night.’
 
‘No, no! It isn’t true!’ she cried softly. ‘Listen to me . . .’
 
She said a few muffled words that no one could hear, then fell silent.
 
‘Answer me,’ said the Judge.
 
The accused woman turned towards the jury and the crowd of people who were watching her intently. She made a weary gesture of despair and sighed. ‘I have nothing to say.’
 
‘Well, then, you will answer my questions. You claim that you refused to speak to him that evening. Yet our enquiries have proven that the next day, 13 October, you went to see him at his home on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques. Is that correct?’
 
‘Yes,’ she said. Blood rushed to her cheeks as she replied, then slowly receded, leaving her pale and trembling.
 
‘So you were in the habit of speaking to young men who accosted you in the street? Or did you find this boy particularly attractive? You have nothing to say? You...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Vintage
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307745465
• ISBN 13: 9780307745460
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 199
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar