All Our Wordly Goods

Irène Némirovsky 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 Française
was published posthumously for the first time in 2006.

Also by Irène Némirovsky

Suite Française
Fire in the Blood
David Golder
The Ball
Snow in Autumn
The Courilof Affair
Dimanche and Other Stories

They were together, so they were happy. Even though the watchful family slipped between them, separating them gently but firmly, the young man and woman knew they were near one another; nothing else mattered. It was the beginning of the century — an autumn evening at the seaside, overlooking the English Channel. Pierre and Agnès, their parents and Pierre’s fiancée had all gathered to watch the last firework display of summer. On the fine sand of the dunes, the inhabitants of Wimereux-Plage formed dark little groups, barely visible in the starlight. The moist sea air drifted around them. A profound sense of tranquillity reigned over them, and over the sea, and over the world.

The families were not very friendly to each other, for they belonged to different social classes: the bourgeoisie didn’t mingle with the lower middle classes. Each kept its place and its distance with modesty, steadfastness and
dignity. Each built itself a fortress out of spades and folding chairs. Each scrupulously respected the possessions of its neighbours and defended its own courteously but resolutely, just as a well-tempered sword bends but does not break. The mothers would murmur, ‘Don’t touch that, it doesn’t belong to you … Excuse me, Madame, this is my son’s seat and this one is mine … Watch your toys or someone will take them.’

Heavy storm clouds had been gathering all day, but it hadn’t rained. Agnès thought how wonderful it would be to dip her bare feet in the water. But it wasn’t done to go into the sea, except at midday and amid a crowd of people, thus somehow preserving a young girl’s modesty. She could hear Pierre sighing. He didn’t like the heat. He was wearing a dark jacket with a stiff collar; its pale white glow allowed her to make him out in the darkness. He was lying in the hollow of a sand dune, impatiently waving his arms. ‘Pierre, come now, sit still,’ his mother said, as if he were twelve years old. In fact he was twenty-four, but her tender, authoritarian voice held such power over him that he obeyed her still. Simone, Pierre’s fiancée, sat between him and Agnès; he turned away to avoid looking at the pale folds of flesh round Simone’s waist and her milky-white round arms. This girl looks as if she’s made of milk, and butter, and cream, he mused. It was strange; he had often looked with pleasure at her fresh, plump body, her thick, soft waist and red hair. But, for some time now, the sight of her made him feel nauseous, like a meal that is too heavy,
too sweet. Nevertheless, they were engaged. The following week, a grand engagement dinner would make it official, uniting the two families. There was no hope for him and Agnès. So little hope that they hadn’t even confessed their love to each other. It was pointless. Pierre Hardelot came from the Hardelot Paper Mills family of Saint-Elme. Agnès’s family were brewers. Only a foreigner, someone from outside, would have thought a marriage between them possible. The people of Saint-Elme had no such illusions;
they
understood, with infallible, subtle tact, how the two young people’s different social standing was a barrier. The brewers were from the lower classes and, even worse, they weren’t from the region but from Flanders. The Hardelots were from Saint-Elme. There were plenty more obstacles. Pierre should have felt despair, but in spite of everything he was happy. Agnès was here. They were together.

The fireworks still hadn’t started. The men allowed themselves to relax a little; they stretched out their legs, propped themselves up on their elbows. ‘No one else is lolling about like you,’ Pierre’s mother whispered in his ear. ‘It isn’t done.’ The women sat on the beach as if they were in drawing-room armchairs, backs straight, skirts modestly covering their ankles. If a blade of pale dune grass bent in the wind to tickle their calves, they closed their legs tight, as if ashamed. Their dresses were long and black; their starched linen collars, stiffened with whalebone, restricted their necks, forcing them to turn their heads from side to side with sudden, staccato
movements, like hens pecking at worms. When the lighthouse beacon passed you could see their hats, a veritable garden of chiffon and velvet flowers quivering on wire stems. Here and there a stuffed seagull with a pointy beak stood perched on a straw boater. This was the height of fashion, the favourite adornment of the season, though some people found it somewhat daring. There was something unsubtle about that bird, with its little glass eye and extended wings, Pierre’s mother thought, as she looked at Agnès’s mother, comparing her neighbour’s grey-feathered hat to her own with its decoration of daisies. But Agnès’s mother was from Paris. There were niceties she couldn’t sense, couldn’t understand.

Nevertheless, she seemed very anxious to please. ‘Yes,’ she would say, ‘I do agree’, or ‘That’s what I think as well’. But even her humility did not inspire confidence. Everyone knew that, before her marriage, Gabrielle Florent had been forced to work for a living. She herself admitted that she’d given singing lessons. Anything was possible. A singing teacher might have socialised with actresses. In spite of everything, she was accepted in Saint-Elme, for, as far as her present conduct was concerned, there was nothing to be said. Yet even though she was accepted, people remained on the defensive.

It would have been better for Agnès, for Agnès’s future, if there had been some precise accusation regarding her mother’s past, rather than these vague insinuations, people whispering, nodding or sighing as she passed by. ‘Do they have family in Paris? I think
this Madame Florent had a bad reputation when she was young. Her daughter will not find a husband so easily. I can’t see her getting married. Can you?’ Monsieur Florent had died three years before. Everyone was surprised that his widow had remained in Saint-Elme. ‘She must have no family left,’ people said, slightly maliciously; in the eyes of Saint-Elme, the absence of numerous relatives was suspicious. ‘She says she’s lost everyone.’ That was no excuse. A good middle-class family should be large, and hardy enough to stand up to death.