Our mysteries veil from the eyes of wicked men!
I on the contrary would go up to the room of two sisters who had come to Balbec with an old foreign lady as her maids. They were what the language of hotels called two courrières, and that of Françoise, who imagined that a courier was a person who was there to run errands (faire des courses) two coursières. The hotels have remained, more nobly, in the period when people sang: “C’est un courrier de cabinet.”8
Difficult as it was for a guest to penetrate to the servants’ quarters, and vice versa, I had very soon formed a mutual bond of friendship, as strong as it was pure, with these two young persons, Mlle Marie Gineste and Mme Céleste Albaret. Born at the foot of the high mountains in the centre of France, on the banks of rivulets and torrents (the water flowed actually under the family home, turning a millwheel, and the house had often been devastated by floods), they seemed to embody the spirit of those waters. Marie Gineste was more regularly rapid and staccato, Céleste Albaret softer and more languishing, spread out like a lake, but with terrible boiling rages in which her fury suggested the peril of spates and whirlwinds that sweep everything before them. They often came in the morning to see me when I was still in bed. I have never known people so deliberately ignorant, who had learned absolutely nothing at school, and yet whose language was somehow so literary that, but for the almost wild naturalness of their tone, one would have thought their speech affected. With a familiarity which I reproduce verbatim, notwithstanding the eulogies (which I set down here in praise not of myself but of the strange genius of Céleste) and the criticisms, equally unfounded but absolutely sincere, which her remarks seem to imply towards me, while I dipped croissants in my milk, Céleste would say to me: “Oh! little black devil with raven hair, oh deep-dyed mischief! I don’t know what your mother was thinking of when she made you, you’re just like a bird. Look, Marie, wouldn’t you say he was preening his feathers, and the supple way he turns his head right round, he looks so light, you’d think he was just learning to fly. Ah! it’s lucky for you that you were born into the ranks of the rich, otherwise what would have become of you, spendthrift that you are? Look at him throwing away his croissant because it touched the bed. There he goes, now, look, he’s spilling his milk. Wait till I tie a napkin round you, because you’ll never do it for yourself, I’ve never seen anyone so foolish and clumsy as you.” I would then hear the more regular sound of the torrent of Marie Gineste furiously reprimanding her sister: “Will you hold your tongue, now, Céleste. Are you mad, talking to Monsieur like that?” Céleste merely smiled; and as I detested having a napkin tied round my neck: “No, Marie, look at him, bang, he’s shot straight up on end like a snake. A proper snake, I tell you.” She was full of zoological similes, for, according to her, it was impossible to tell when I slept, I fluttered about all night like a moth, and in the daytime I was as swift as the squirrels, “you know, Marie, which we used to see at home, so nimble that even with the eyes you can’t follow them.” “But, Céleste, you know he doesn’t like having a napkin when he’s eating.” “It isn’t that he doesn’t like it, it’s so that he can say nobody can make him do anything he doesn’t want to. He’s a grand gentleman and he wants to show that he is. You change the sheets ten times over if need be, but he still won’t be satisfied. Yesterday’s had served their time, but today they’ve only just been put on the bed and they have to be changed already. Oh, I was right when I said that he was never meant to be born among the poor. Look, his hair’s standing on end, puffing out with rage like a bird’s feathers. Poor feather-pether!” Here it was not only Marie who protested, but myself, for I did not feel in the least like a grand gentleman. But Céleste would never believe in the sincerity of my modesty and would cut me short: “Oh, what a bag of tricks! Oh, the soft talk, the deceitfulness! Ah, rogue among rogues, churl of churls! Ah, Molière!” (This was the only writer’s name that she knew, but she applied it to me, meaning thereby a person who was capable both of writing plays and of acting them.) “Céleste!” came the imperious cry from Marie, who, not knowing the name of Molière, was afraid that it might be some fresh insult. Céleste continued to smile: “Then you haven’t seen the photograph of him in his drawer, when he was little? He tried to make us believe that he was always dressed quite simply. And there, with his little cane, he’s all furs and lace, such as not even a prince ever wore. But that’s nothing compared with his tremendous majesty and his even more profound kindness.” “So you go rummaging in his drawers now, do you?” growled the torrent Marie. To calm Marie’s fears I asked her what she thought of M. Nissim Bernard’s behaviour . . . “Ah! Monsieur, there are things I wouldn’t have believed could exist until I came here.” And for once going one better than Céleste with an even more profound observation, she added: “Ah! You see, Monsieur, one can never tell what there may be in a person’s life.” To change the subject, I spoke to her of the life led by my father, who worked night and day. “Ah! Monsieur, there are people who keep nothing of their life for themselves, not one minute, not one pleasure, the whole thing is a sacrifice for others, they are lives that are offered up . . . Look, Céleste, simply the way he puts his hand on the counterpane and picks up his croissant, what distinction! He can do the most insignificant things, and you’d think that the whole nobility of France, right to the Pyrenees, was stirring in each of his movements.”
Overwhelmed by this portrait that was so far from lifelike, I remained silent; Céleste interpreted my silence as a further instance of guile: “Ah! forehead that looks so pure and hides so many things, nice, cool cheeks like the inside of an almond, little hands all soft and satiny, nails like claws,” and so forth. “There, Marie, look at him sipping his milk with a reverence that makes me want to say my prayers. What a serious air! Someone really ought to take a picture of him as he is just now. He’s just like a child. Is it by drinking milk, like them, that you’ve kept that clear complexion? Ah, what youth! Ah, what lovely skin! You’ll never grow old. You’re lucky, you’ll never need to raise your hand against anyone, for you have eyes that know how to impose their will. Look at him now, he’s angry. He shoots up, straight as a gospel truth.”
Françoise did not at all approve of those she called the two “wheedlers” coming to talk to me like this. The manager, who made his staff keep watch over everything that went on, even pointed out to me gravely that it was not proper for a customer to talk to servants. I, who found the “wheedlers” better company than any visitor in the hotel, merely laughed in his face, convinced that he would not understand my explanations. And the sisters returned. “Look, Marie, at his delicate features. Oh, perfect miniature, finer than the most precious you could see in a glass case, because he has movement, and words you could listen to for days and nights.”
It was a miracle that a foreign lady could have brought them there, for, without knowing anything of history or geography, they heartily detested the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Italians, all foreign “vermin,” and cared, with certain exceptions, for French people alone. Their faces had so far preserved the moisture of the malleable clay of their native river beds, that, as soon as one mentioned a foreigner who was staying in the hotel, in order to repeat what he had said Céleste and Marie at once took on his facial expression, their mouths became his mouth, their eyes his eyes—one would have liked to preserve these admirable comic masks. Céleste indeed, while pretending merely to be repeating what the manager or one of my friends had said, would insert in her little narrative, apparently quite unwittingly, fictitious remarks in which were maliciously portrayed all the defects of Bloch, the judge, and others. Under the form of a report on a simple errand which she had obligingly undertaken, she would provide an inimitable portrait. They never read anything, not even a newspaper. One day, however, they found a book lying on my bed. It was a volume of the admirable but obscure poems of Saint-Léger Léger.9 Céleste read a few pages and said to me: “But are you quite sure that it’s poetry? Mightn’t it just be riddles?” Obviously, to a pers
on who had learned in her childhood a single poem: “Here below the lilacs die,” there was a lack of transition. I fancy that their obstinate refusal to learn anything was due in part to the unhealthy climate of their early home. They had nevertheless all the gifts of a poet with more modesty than poets generally show. For if Céleste had said something noteworthy and, unable to remember it correctly, I asked her to repeat it, she would assure me that she had forgotten. They will never read any books, but neither will they ever write any.
Françoise was considerably impressed when she learned that the two brothers of these humble women had married, one the niece of the Archbishop of Tours, the other a relative of the Bishop of Rodez. To the manager, this would have conveyed nothing. Céleste would sometimes reproach her husband with his failure to understand her, and I myself was astonished that he could put up with her. For at certain moments, quivering, raging, destroying everything, she was detestable. It is said that the salt liquid which is our blood is only an internal survival of the primitive marine element. Similarly, I believe that Céleste, not only in her bursts of fury, but also in her hours of depression, preserved the rhythm of her native streams. When she was exhausted, it was after their fashion; she had literally run dry. Nothing could then have revitalised her. Then all of a sudden the circulation was restored in her tall, slender, magnificent body. The water flowed in the opaline transparence of her bluish skin. She smiled in the sun and became bluer still. At such moments she was truly celestial.
In spite of the fact that Bloch’s family had never suspected the reason why their uncle never lunched at home, and had accepted it from the first as the idiosyncrasy of an elderly bachelor, attributable perhaps to the demands of a liaison with some actress, everything that concerned M. Nissim Bernard was taboo to the manager of the Balbec hotel. And it was for this reason that, without even referring to the uncle, he had finally not ventured to find fault with the niece, albeit recommending her to be a little more circumspect. Mlle Bloch and her friend, who for some days had imagined themselves to have been excluded from the Casino and the Grand Hotel, seeing that all was well, were delighted to show those respectable family men who held aloof from them that they might with impunity take the utmost liberties. No doubt they did not go so far as to repeat the public exhibition which had revolted everybody. But gradually they returned to their old ways. And one evening as I came out of the Casino, which was half in darkness, with Albertine and Bloch whom we had met there, they came by, linked together, kissing each other incessantly, and, as they passed us, crowed and chortled and uttered indecent cries. Bloch lowered his eyes so as to seem not to have recognised his sister, and I was tortured by the thought that this private and horrifying language was addressed perhaps to Albertine.
Another incident focused my preoccupations even more in the direction of Gomorrah. I had noticed on the beach a handsome young woman, slender and pale, whose eyes, round their centre, scattered rays so geometrically luminous that one was reminded, on meeting her gaze, of some constellation. I thought how much more beautiful she was than Albertine, and how much wiser it would be to give up the other. But the face of this beautiful young woman had been scoured by the invisible plane of a thoroughly depraved life, of the constant acceptance of vulgar expedients, so much so that her eyes, though nobler than the rest of her face, could radiate nothing but appetites and desires. On the following day, this young woman being seated a long way away from us in the Casino, I saw that she never ceased to fasten upon Albertine the alternating and revolving beam of her gaze. It was as though she were making signals to her with a lamp. It pained me that Albertine should see that she was being so closely observed, and I was afraid that these incessantly rekindled glances might be the agreed signal for an amorous assignation next day. For all I knew, this assignation might not be the first. The young woman with the flashing eyes might have come another year to Balbec. It was perhaps because Albertine had already yielded to her desires, or to those of a friend, that this woman allowed herself to address to her those flashing signals. If so, they were doing more than demand something for the present; they invoked a justification for it in pleasant hours in the past.
This assignation, in that case, must be not the first, but the sequel to adventures shared in past years. And indeed her glance did not say: “Will you?” As soon as the young woman had caught sight of Albertine, she had turned her head and beamed upon her glances charged with recollection, as though she were afraid and amazed that my beloved did not remember. Albertine, who could see her plainly, remained phlegmatically motionless, with the result that the other, with the same sort of discretion as a man who sees his old mistress with a new lover, ceased to look at her and paid no more attention to her than if she had not existed.
But a day or two later, I received proof of this young woman’s tendencies, and also of the probability of her having known Albertine in the past. Often, in the hall of the Casino, when two girls were smitten with mutual desire, a sort of luminous phenomenon occurred, as it were a phosphorescent trail flashing from one to the other. It may be noted, incidentally, that it is by the aid of such materialisations, impalpable though they be, by these astral signs that set a whole section of the atmosphere ablaze, that Gomorrah, dispersed, tends in every town, in every village, to reunite its separated members, to rebuild the biblical city while everywhere the same efforts are being made, if only in view of an intermittent reconstruction, by the nostalgic, the hypocritical, sometimes the courageous exiles of Sodom.
Once I saw the unknown woman whom Albertine had appeared not to recognise, just at the moment when Bloch’s cousin was passing by. The young woman’s eyes flashed, but it was quite evident that she did not know the Jewish girl. She beheld her for the first time, felt a desire, scarcely any doubt, but by no means the same certainty as in the case of Albertine, Albertine upon whose friendship she must so far have counted that, in the face of her coldness, she had felt the surprise of a foreigner familiar with Paris but not a resident, who, having returned to spend a few weeks there, finds the site of the little theatre where he was in the habit of spending pleasant evenings occupied now by a bank.
Bloch’s cousin went and sat down at a table where she turned the pages of a magazine. Presently the young woman came and sat down beside her with an abstracted air. But under the table one could presently see their feet wriggling, then their legs and hands intertwined. Words followed, a conversation began, and the young woman’s guileless husband, who had been looking everywhere for her, was astonished to find her making plans for that very evening with a girl whom he did not know. His wife introduced Bloch’s cousin to him as a childhood friend, under an inaudible name, for she had forgotten to ask her what her name was. But the husband’s presence made their intimacy advance a stage further, for they addressed each other as tu, having known each other at their convent, an incident at which they laughed heartily later on, as well as at the hoodwinked husband, with a gaiety which afforded them an excuse for further caresses.
As for Albertine, I cannot say that anywhere, whether at the Casino or on the beach, her behaviour with any girl was unduly free. I found in it indeed an excess of coldness and indifference which seemed to be more than good breeding, to be a ruse planned to avert suspicion. When questioned by some girl, she had a quick, icy, prim way of replying in a very loud voice: “Yes, I shall be at the tennis-court about five. I shall go for a bathe tomorrow morning about eight,” and of at once turning away from the person to whom she had said this—all of which had a horrible appearance of being meant to put one off the scent, and either to make an assignation, or rather, the assignation having already been made in a whisper, to utter these perfectly harmless words aloud so as not to attract undue attention. And when later on I saw her mount her bicycle and scorch away into the distance, I could not help thinking that she was on her way to join the girl to whom she had barely spoken.
However, when some handsome young woman stepped out of a motor-car at the end of the beach,
Albertine could not help turning round. And she would at once explain: “I was looking at the new flag they’ve put up over the bathing place. They might have spent a bit more on it! The old one was pretty moth-eaten, but I really think this one is mouldier still.”
On one occasion Albertine was not content with cold indifference, and this made me all the more wretched. She knew that I was concerned about the possibility of her meeting a friend of her aunt, who had a “bad name” and came now and again to spend a few days with Mme Bontemps. Albertine had pleased me by telling me that she would not speak to her again. And when this woman came to Incarville Albertine would say: “By the way, you know she’s here. Have they told you?” as though to show me that she was not seeing her in secret. One day, when she told me this, she added: “Yes, I ran into her on the beach, and knocked against her as I passed, on purpose, to be rude to her.” When Albertine told me this, there came back to my mind a remark made by Mme Bontemps, to which I had never given a second thought, when she had said to Mme Swann in my presence how brazen her niece Albertine was, as though that were a merit, and how Albertine reminded the wife of some official or other that her father had been a kitchen-boy. But a thing said by the woman we love does not long retain its purity; it cankers, it putrefies. An evening or two later, I thought again of Albertine’s remark, and it was no longer the ill-breeding of which she boasted—and which could only make me smile—that it seemed to me to signify; it was something else, to wit that Albertine, perhaps even without any precise object, to tease this woman’s senses, or wantonly to remind her of former propositions, accepted perhaps in the past, had swiftly brushed against her, had thought that I had perhaps heard of this as it had been done in public, and had wished to forestall an unfavourable interpretation.
However, the jealousy that was caused me by the women whom Albertine perhaps loved was abruptly to cease.
In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV Page 31
