In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV

by Marcel Proust

  I went upstairs to my room, but I was not alone there. I could hear someone mellifluously playing Schumann. No doubt it happens at times that people, even those whom we love best, become permeated with the gloom or irritation that emanates from us. There is however an inanimate object which is capable of a power of exasperation to which no human being will ever attain: to wit, a piano.

  Albertine had made me take a note of the dates on which she would be going away for a few days to visit various friends, and had made me write down their addresses as well, in case I should want her on one of those evenings, for none of them lived very far away. This meant that in seeking her out, from one girlfriend to another, I found her more and more entwined in ropes of flowers. I must confess that many of her friends—I was not yet in love with her—gave me, at one watering-place or another, moments of pleasure. These obliging young playmates did not seem to me to be very many. But recently I thought of them again, and their names came back to me. I counted that, in that one season, a dozen conferred on me their ephemeral favours. Another name came back to me later, which made thirteen. I then had a sort of childish fear of settling on that number. Alas, I realised that I had forgotten the first, Albertine who was no more and who made the fourteenth.

  To resume the thread of my narrative, I had written down the names and addresses of the girls with whom I should find her on the days when she was not to be at Incarville, but had decided that on those days I would rather take the opportunity to call on Mme Verdurin. In any case, our desires for different women vary in intensity. One evening we cannot bear to be deprived of one who, after that, for the next month or two, will trouble us scarcely at all. And then there are the laws of alternation—which it is not the place to study here—whereby, after an over-exertion of the flesh, the woman whose image haunts our momentary senility is one to whom we would barely give more than a kiss on the forehead. As for Albertine, I saw her seldom, and only on the very infrequent evenings when I felt that I could not do without her. If such a desire seized me when she was too far from Balbec for Françoise to be able to go and fetch her, I used to send the lift-boy to Epreville, to La Sogne, to Saint-Frichoux, asking him to finish his work a little earlier than usual. He would come into my room, but would leave the door open, for although he was conscientious at his “job” which was pretty hard, consisting in endless cleanings from five o’clock in the morning, he could never bring himself to make the effort to shut a door, and, if one pointed out to him that it was open, would turn back and, summoning up all his strength, give it a gentle push. With the democratic pride that marked him, a pride to which, in the liberal avocations, the members of a profession that is at all numerous never attain, barristers, doctors and men of letters speaking simply of a “brother” barrister, doctor or man of letters, he, rightly employing a term that is confined to close corporations like the Academy, would say to me in speaking of a page who was in charge of the lift on alternate days: “I’ll see if I can get my colleague to take my place.” This pride did not prevent him from accepting remuneration for his errands, with a view to increasing what he called his “salary,” a fact which had made Françoise take a dislike to him: “Yes, the first time you see him you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but there’s days when he’s as friendly as a prison gate. They’re all money-grubbers.” This was the category in which she had so often included Eulalie, and in which, alas (when I think of all the trouble that it was eventually to bring), she already placed Albertine, because she saw me often asking Mamma for trinkets and other little presents on behalf of my impecunious friend, something which Françoise considered inexcusable because Mme Bontemps had only a general help.

  A moment later the lift-boy, having removed what I should have called his livery and he called his tunic, would appear wearing a straw hat, carrying a cane and holding himself stiffly erect, for his mother had warned him never to adopt a “working-class” or “messenger boy” manner. Just as, thanks to books, all knowledge is open to a working man, who ceases to be such when he has finished his work, so, thanks to a “boater” and a pair of gloves, elegance became accessible to the lift-boy who, having ceased for the evening to take the guests upstairs, imagined himself, like a young surgeon who has taken off his smock, or Sergeant Saint-Loup out of uniform, a typical young man about town. He was not for that matter lacking in ambition, or in talent either in manipulating his machine and not bringing you to a standstill between two floors. But his vocabulary was defective. I credited him with ambition because he said in speaking of the porter, who was his immediate superior, “my porter,” in the same tone in which a man who owned what the lift-boy would have called a “private mansion” in Paris would have referred to his janitor. As for the lift-boy’s vocabulary, it is curious that someone who heard people, fifty times a day, calling for the “lift,” should never himself call it anything but a “liff.” There were certain things about this lift-boy that were extremely irritating: whatever I might say to him he would interrupt with the phrase: “I should think so!” or “Of course!” which seemed either to imply that my remark was so obvious that anybody would have thought of it, or else to take all the credit for it to himself, as though it were he that was drawing my attention to the subject. “I should think so!” or “Of course!”, exclaimed with the utmost emphasis, issued from his lips every other minute, in connexion with things he would never have dreamed of, a trick which irritated me so much that I immediately began to say the opposite to show him that he had no idea what he was talking about. But to my second assertion, although it was incompatible with the first, he would reply no less stoutly: “I should think so!” “Of course!” as though these words were inevitable. I found it difficult, also, to forgive him the trick of employing certain terms that were proper to his calling, and would therefore have sounded perfectly correct in their literal sense, in a figurative sense only, which gave them an air of feeble witticism—for instance the verb “to pedal.” He never used it when he had gone anywhere on his bicycle. But if, on foot, he had hurried to arrive somewhere in time, then, to indicate that he had walked fast, he would exclaim: “I should say I didn’t half pedal!” The lift-boy was on the small side, ill-made and rather ugly. This did not prevent him, whenever one spoke to him of some tall, slim, lithe young man, from saying: “Oh, yes, I know, a fellow who is just my height.” And one day when I was expecting him to bring me a message, hearing somebody come upstairs, I had in my impatience opened the door of my room and caught sight of a page as handsome as Endymion, with incredibly perfect features, who was bringing a message to a lady whom I did not know. When the lift-boy returned, in telling him how impatiently I had waited for the message, I mentioned to him that I had thought I heard him come upstairs but that it had turned out to be a page from the Hôtel de Normandie. “Oh, yes, I know,” he said, “they have only the one, a fellow about my build. He’s so like me in face, too, that we could easily be mistaken for one another; anybody would think he was my brother.” Lastly, he always wanted to appear to have understood you perfectly from the first second, which meant that as soon as you asked him to do anything he would say: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand all that,” with a precision and a tone of intelligence which for some time deceived me; but other people, as we get to know them, are like a metal dipped in an acid bath, and we see them gradually lose their qualities (and their defects too, at times). Before giving him my instructions, I saw that he had left the door open; I pointed this out to him, for I was afraid that people might hear us; he acceded to my request and returned, having reduced the gap. “Anything to oblige. But there’s nobody on this floor except us two.” Immediately I heard one, then a second, then a third person go by. This annoyed me partly because of the risk of my being overheard, but mainly because I could see that it did not in the least surprise him and was a perfectly normal coming and going. “Yes, that’ll be the maid next door going for her things. Oh, that’s of no importance, it’s the wine waiter putting away his keys. N
o, no, it’s nothing, you can say what you want, it’s my colleague just going on duty.” Then, as the reasons that all these people had for passing did not diminish my dislike of the thought that they might overhear me, at a formal order from me he went, not to shut the door, which was beyond the strength of this cyclist who longed for a “motor-bike,” but to push it a little closer to. “Now we’ll be nice and peaceful.” So peaceful were we that an American lady burst in and withdrew with apologies for having mistaken the number of her room. “You are to bring this young lady back with you,” I told him, after banging the door shut with all my might (which brought in another page to see whether a window had been left open). “You remember the name: Mlle Albertine Simonet. Anyhow it’s on the envelope. You need only say to her that it’s from me. She will be delighted to come,” I added, to encourage him and preserve my own self-esteem. “I should think so!” “On the contrary, it isn’t at all natural to suppose that she should be glad to come. It’s very inconvenient getting here from Berneville.” “Don’t I know it!” “You will tell her to come with you.” “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand perfectly,” he replied, in that shrewd and precise tone which had long ceased to make a “good impression” upon me because I knew that it was almost mechanical and covered with its apparent clearness a great deal of vagueness and stupidity. “When will you be back?” “Shan’t take too long,” said the lift-boy, who, carrying to extremes the grammatical rule that forbids the repetition of personal pronouns before co-ordinate verbs, omitted the pronoun altogether. “Should be able to go all right. Actually, leave was stopped this afternoon, because there was a dinner for twenty at lunch-time. And it was my turn off duty today. Should be all right if I go out a bit this evening, though. Take my bike with me. Get there in no time.” And an hour later he reappeared and said: “Monsieur’s had to wait, but the young lady’s come with me. She’s down below.” “Oh, thanks very much; the porter won’t be cross with me?” “Monsieur Paul? Doesn’t even know where I’ve been. Even the head doorman didn’t say a word.” But once, after I had told him: “You absolutely must bring her back with you,” he reported to me with a smile: “You know I couldn’t find her. She’s not there. Couldn’t wait any longer because I was afraid of copping it like my colleague who was ‘missed from the hotel” (for the lift-boy, who used the word “rejoin” of a profession which one joined for the first time—“I should like to rejoin the post office”—to make up for this, or to mitigate the calamity if his own career was at stake, or to insinuate it more suavely and treacherously if the victim was someone else, elided the prefix and said: “I know he’s been ‘missed”). It was not out of malice that he smiled, but out of sheer timidity. He thought that he was diminishing the magnitude of his offence by making a joke of it. In the same way, when he said to me: “You know I couldn’t find her,” this did not mean that he really thought that I knew it already. On the contrary, he was all too certain that I did not know it, and, what was more, was scared of the fact. And so he said “you know” to spare himself the torments he would have to go through in uttering the words that would bring me the knowledge. We ought never to lose our tempers with people who, when we find them at fault, begin to snigger. They do so not because they are laughing at us, but because they are afraid of our displeasure. Let us show all pity and tenderness to those who laugh. For all the world as though he were having a stroke, the lift-boy’s anxiety had wrought in him not merely an apoplectic flush but an alteration in his speech, which had suddenly become familiar. He wound up by telling me that Albertine was not at Epreville, that she would not be coming back there before nine o’clock, and that if betimes (which meant, by chance) she came back earlier, my message would be given her and in any case she would be with me before one o’clock in the morning.

  It was not on that evening, however, that my cruel mistrust began to take solid form. No, to reveal it here and now, although the incident did not occur until some weeks later, it arose out of a remark made by Cottard. On the day in question Albertine and her friends had wanted to drag me to the casino at Incarville where, to my ultimate good fortune, I would not have joined them (wanting to pay a visit to Mme Verdurin who had invited me several times), had I not been held up at Incarville itself by a train breakdown which required a considerable time to repair. As I strolled up and down waiting for the men to finish working at it, I found myself all of a sudden face to face with Dr Cottard, who had come to Incarville to see a patient. I almost hesitated to greet him as he had not answered any of my letters. But friendliness does not express itself in everyone in the same way. Not having been brought up to observe the same fixed rules of behaviour as society people, Cottard was full of good intentions of which one knew nothing and even denied the existence, until the day when he had an opportunity of displaying them. He apologised, had indeed received my letters, had reported my whereabouts to the Verdurins who were most anxious to see me and whom he urged me to go and see. He even proposed to take me there that very evening, for he was waiting for the little local train to take him back there for dinner. As I was uncertain and as he had still some time before his train (for the breakdown threatened to be a fairly long one), I made him come with me to the little casino, one of those that had struck me as being so gloomy on the evening of my first arrival, now filled with the tumult of the girls, who, in the absence of male partners, were dancing together. Andrée came sliding along the floor towards me; I was meaning to go off with Cottard in a moment to the Verdurins’, when I finally declined his offer, seized by an irresistible desire to stay with Albertine. The fact was that I had just heard her laugh. And this laugh at once evoked the flesh-pink, fragrant surfaces with which it seemed to have just been in contact and of which it seemed to carry with it, pungent, sensual and revealing as the scent of geraniums, a few almost tangible and secretly provoking particles.

  One of the girls, a stranger to me, sat down at the piano, and Andrée invited Albertine to waltz with her. Happy in the thought that I was going to remain in this little casino with these girls, I remarked to Cottard how well they danced together. But he, taking the professional point of view of a doctor and with an ill-breeding which overlooked the fact that they were my friends, although he must have seen me greet them, replied: “Yes, but parents are very rash to allow their daughters to form such habits. I should certainly never let mine come here. Are they pretty, though? I can’t make out their features. There now, look,” he went on, pointing to Albertine and Andrée who were waltzing slowly, tightly clasped together, “I’ve left my glasses behind and I can’t see very well, but they are certainly keenly roused. It’s not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their breasts. And theirs, as you see, are touching completely.” And indeed the contact between the breasts of Andrée and of Albertine had been constant. I do not know whether they heard or guessed Cottard’s observation, but they drew slightly apart while continuing to waltz. At that moment Andrée said something to Albertine, who laughed with the same deep and penetrating laugh that I had heard before. But the unease it roused in me this time was nothing but painful; Albertine appeared to be conveying, to be making Andrée share, some secret and voluptuous thrill. It rang out like the first or the last chords of an alien celebration. I left the place with Cottard, absorbed in conversation with him, thinking only at odd moments of the scene I had just witnessed. Not that Cottard’s conversation was interesting. It had indeed, at that moment, become rather sour, for we had just seen Dr du Boulbon go past without noticing us. He had come down to spend some time on the other side of the bay from Balbec, where he was greatly in demand. Now, albeit Cottard was in the habit of declaring that he did no professional work during the holidays, he had hoped to build up a select practice along the coast, an ambition which du Boulbon’s presence there was likely to hinder. Certainly, the Balbec doctor could not stand in Cottard’s way. He was merely a thoroughly conscientious doctor who knew everything, and to whom you could not mention the slightest itch without hi
s immediately prescribing, in a complicated formula, the ointment, lotion or liniment that would put you right. As Marie Gineste used to say in her pretty parlance, he knew how to “charm” cuts and sores. But he was in no way eminent. True, he had caused Cottard some slight annoyance. The latter, now that he was anxious to exchange his chair for that of Therapeutics, had begun to specialise in toxic actions. These, a perilous innovation in medicine, give an excuse for changing the labels in the chemists’ shops, where every preparation is declared to be in no way toxic, unlike its substitutes, and indeed to be disintoxicant. It is the fashionable cry; at the most there may survive below in illegible lettering, like the faint trace of an older fashion, the assurance that the preparation has been carefully antisepticised. Toxic actions serve also to reassure the patient, who learns with joy that his paralysis is merely a toxic disturbance. Now, a grand duke who had come for a few days to Balbec and whose eye was extremely swollen had sent for Cottard who, in return for a wad of hundred-franc notes (the Professor refused to see anyone for less), had put down the inflammation to a toxic condition and prescribed a disintoxicant treatment. As the swelling did not go down, the grand duke fell back upon the general practitioner of Balbec, who in five minutes had removed a speck of dust. The following day, the swelling had gone. A celebrated specialist in nervous diseases was, however, a more dangerous rival. He was a rubicund, jovial man, at once because the constant society of nervous wrecks did not prevent him from enjoying excellent health, and also in order to reassure his patients by the hearty merriment of his “Good morning” and “Good-bye,” while quite ready to lend the strength of his muscular arms to fastening them in strait-jackets later on. Nevertheless, whenever you spoke to him at a gathering, whether political or literary, he would listen to you with benevolent attention, as though he were saying: “What can I do for you?” without at once giving an opinion, as though it were a medical consultation. But anyhow he, whatever his talent might be, was a specialist. And so the whole of Cottard’s rage was concentrated upon du Boulbon. But I soon took my leave of the Verdurins’ professor friend, and returned to Balbec, after promising him that I would pay them a visit before long.