Disappointed as I was with Mlle Simonet, a young girl not very different from others I knew, I consoled myself with the thought (just as my disappointment with the church of Balbec had not affected my desire to go to Quimperlé, Pont-Aven and Venice) that, even though she had not lived up to my expectations, at least through her I would be able to meet her friends in the little gang.
I thought at first that I was going to fail in this aim. As she was going to be staying in Balbec for quite a while, as I was myself, I had decided that it would be better not to seek her out too directly, but wait for an opportunity when circumstances would bring us together. However, if that were to happen every day, it was very likely that she would do no more than greet me without stopping, and by the end of the season I would be no further forward.
Not many days later, one morning when it had rained and it was almost cold, I was accosted on the esplanade by a young girl with a little flat hat and a muff, so different from the person I had seen at Elstir’s reception that it appeared to be a feat beyond the power of the human mind to recognize her. My mind, however, managed it, but only after a second’s surprise, which I think did not escape Albertine’s notice. Also, remembering the good manners which had so struck me, I was now surprised by their opposite, her coarse tone and her ‘little gang’ manners. And then her temple was no longer the reassuring optical centre of her face, either because I was now on her other side, or because her hat concealed it, or because its flush was not constant. ‘What weather! she said. Balbec’s endless summer is just a great joke, of course. Don’t you do anything here? You’re never to be seen at the golf-course or the dances in the Casino, and you’re never out riding a horse either. You must find it all a great bore. You don’t think that people who just stay on the beach are a bit silly? Oh, I see, you like just lazing about. Well, you’ve got plenty of time. I can see you’re not like me – I love all sports! You weren’t at the races at La Sogne? We went by the tram and I can understand that you wouldn’t want to set foot in a rattletrap like that. It took two hours! I could’ve gone there and back three times on my bike!’ I had admired Saint-Loup for referring quite naturally to the little local train as the ‘Slowcoach’ because of all the twists and turns of the line, but her fluency with words like ‘tram’ and ‘rattletrap’ disconcerted me: I sensed in it a mastery of forms of speech in which I was afraid she must recognize my inferiority, and for which she would despise me. At that time, the wealth of synonyms current among the little gang for that little train had not yet been revealed to me. When she spoke, Albertine held her head still, keeping her nostrils tight and barely moving her lips. This gave her a nasal drawl, perhaps partly composed of the accents of provincial forebears, a youthful affectation of imperturbable Britishness, the coaching of a foreign governess and a blocked nose. This pronunciation, which, once she got to know people better, disappeared and was replaced by a more naturally girlish manner, could have sounded quite unpleasant. But I found the peculiarity of it enchanting. When I had not seen her for a few days, I could excite myself by repeating, ‘You’re never to be seen at the golf-course,’ with the nasal twang she had used, speaking straight at me, without moving her head. And I thought there could be no one more desirable in the whole world.
That morning, we were one of the couples who here and there punctuate the esplanade with their momentary meetings, pausing long enough to exchange a few words before separating to take up again their two diverging trajectories. I took advantage of this brief immobility to make a thorough check of the place where the beauty spot was to be found. Just as a phrase of Vinteuil which had delighted me in the sonata, and which my memory kept moving from the andante to the finale, until the day when, with the score in hand, I was able to find it and localize it where it belonged, in the scherzo, so the beauty spot, which I had remembered on her cheek, then on her chin, came to rest for ever on her upper lip, just under her nose. In the same way, we are astonished to come upon a stanza we know by heart, but in a poem which we did not realize contained it.
At that moment, as though for the purpose of displaying, in the full variety of its forms, against the back-drop of the sea, all the fluent freedom of the rich decorative ensemble made by the procession of the virgins, both golden and pink, coloured by the sun and the wind, the group of Albertine’s friends, with their lovely legs and their lithe waists, but all different from one another, came towards us, nearer to the sea than we were, stretched out in a long line. I asked her if I might walk with her for a moment. Unfortunately, she did no more than wave to them. ‘But won’t your friends feel you’ve abandoned them?’ I asked, in the hope that we might all go for a walk together. A young man with regular features and tennis racquets approached us. It was the baccarat-player, whose follies so scandalized the wife of the First President. With a manner which was cold and expressionless, and which he clearly believed was one of supreme distinction, he said good morning to Albertine. ‘Have you been golfing, Octave? she asked. Did you have a good game? Were you in good form? – Oh, I’m disgusted with myself. I’m just an also-ran. – And was Andrée there? – Yes, she had a round of seventy-seven. – Goodness me! That’s a record! – I went round in eighty-two yesterday.’ He was the son of a very wealthy industrialist who was to play a rather important part in the organizing of the next International Exhibition. I was struck by how knowledgeable this young man and the other few male friends of the girls were in things like clothes, ways of wearing them, cigars, English drinks, horses – a form of erudition which in him was highly developed, which he wore with a proud infallibility, reminiscent of the scholar’s modest reticence – an expertise which was quite self-sufficient, without the slightest need for any accompanying intellectual cultivation. He could not be faulted on the appropriate occasions for wearing dinner-jacket or pyjama-suit, but he had no idea of the way to use certain words, or even of the most elementary rules of good grammar. That disparity between two cultures must have been shared by his father, who, in his capacity as president of the Association of Property-owners of Balbec, had written an open letter to his constituents, now to be seen as a placard on all the walls, in which he said, ‘I was desirous of talking to the Mayor about this matter, however, he was of a mind to not hear me out on my just demands.’ At the Casino, Octave won prizes in all the dancing competitions – the Boston dip, the tango and so on – a qualification, if he should ever need one, for a good marriage among seaside society, a milieu in which young girls quite literally end up married to their ‘partner’. He lit a cigar and said to Albertine, ‘If you don’t mind,’ as one excuses oneself for going on with an urgent piece of work in the presence of someone. For he always ‘had to be doing something’, despite the fact that he never did anything. Just as a total lack of activity can eventually have the same effects as over-work, whether in the emotional domain or in the domain of the body and its muscles, the constant intellectual vacuum which resided behind the pensive forehead of Octave had had the result, despite his undisturbed air, of giving him ineffectual urges to think, which kept him awake at night, as though he were a metaphysician with too much on his mind.
Thinking that, if I knew their friends, I might have more opportunities of seeing the girls, I had been about to ask Albertine to introduce me to him. As soon as he had walked away, repeating, ‘I’m just an also-ran,’ I said so to her, with the idea that this might inspire her to introduce us on the next occasion. ‘Oh, goodness! she said. I couldn’t introduce you to a lounge lizard! The place is crawling with them! But they’d be incapable of conversing with you. He’s good at golf and that’s all he’s good at. Believe me, he wouldn’t be your type at all. – Your friends will feel neglected if you stay away from them like this, I said, hoping she would suggest we go and meet them together. – Not at all, they don’t need me.’ We soon came upon Bloch: he gave me a shrewd and meaning smile; then, in some perplexity towards Albertine, whom he did not know, or rather whom he did know but ‘without being acquainted with her’, with a
stiff, uncouth movement, he gave a nod. ‘Who’s that savage? she asked. I can’t think why he’s nodding at me – he doesn’t know me. I’ll ignore him.’ I had no time to reply, as Bloch came straight over and said to me, ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but I just wanted to let you know I’m going over to Doncières tomorrow. It would be impolite of me to leave it any longer and I don’t know what Saint-Loup-en-Bray must think of me. So I’m letting you know that I’ll be taking the two o’clock. It’s up to you.’ However, I had no thoughts for anything but Albertine and the need to meet her girl-friends. Hence, a visit to Doncières, where they never went, which would get me back to Balbec long after their time for appearing on the beach, seemed like a trip to the end of the earth. So I told Bloch I could not go. ‘In that case, I’ll go by myself. And to charm Saint-Loup-en-Bray’s clericalism, I shall speak to him of you with the ridiculous couplet of Master Arouet:
Apprends que mon devoir ne dépend point du sien;
Qu’il y manque, s’il veut; je dois faire le mien.94
– I can see he’s really quite handsome, Albertine said. But I must say I don’t like him at all!’
It had never occurred to me that Bloch might be ‘quite handsome’. But he was: with his slightly protruding forehead, his pronounced Roman nose, his look of being extremely astute (and of believing he was extremely astute), he had a very pleasant face. Even so, he was not to Albertine’s liking. This may have been explainable by the dislikable sides of her own character, the toughness of the little gang, its insensitivity, its rudeness towards all things outside itself. Later, when I had introduced them, her dislike did not lessen. Bloch belonged to a world which, what with its sneer at good society and yet the tolerance of good manners which a man must retain if he is not to be seen as untouchable, has reached a sort of special compromise by the use of manners which, though not quite those of fashionable society, manage to achieve a peculiar kind of detestable fashionableness. When you introduced him to someone, he would bow with a sceptical smile and an exaggerated show of respect, and, if it were a man whose hand he was shaking, he would say, ‘Charmed to meet you, sir,’ in a voice which mocked the words it spoke, but which knew it did not belong to a boor. Having occupied that second in simultaneously observing and scoffing at a custom (just as he would say, on New Year’s Day, ‘I wish you a Happy New One’), he would then affect an acute and wily expression, and ‘let fall pearls of wisdom’, which I often found full of good sense but which Albertine ‘could not abide’. On that first day, when I told her his name was Bloch, she exclaimed, ‘I wouldn’t have minded betting he was a Jew-boy! They always know how to get your back up!’ At a later stage too, Bloch was to irritate Albertine in another way. Like many intellectuals, he could not say simple things simply. He would describe them with precious epithets, then generalize. Albertine, who disliked it when people paid attention to what she was doing, was annoyed that, when she had sprained her ankle and was resting, Bloch said, ‘She’s lying on her chaise longue. But being gifted with ubiquity, she continues simultaneously to haunt ghostly golf-courses and the tritest of tennis lawns.’ It was merely his ‘stylish’ banter; but to Albertine, who felt it might create difficulties for her with people who had invited her out, and whom she had told she was incapable of moving, it was enough to make her loathe the sight and the sound of the person who said such things. Having agreed to go out together soon, she and I parted. While talking to her, I had been as unaware of my words and where they went as though I had been throwing pebbles into a bottomless well. That in general the people to whom we speak draw from within themselves the meaning they give to our words, and that this meaning is very different from the one we put into them, is a truth constantly revealed to us by everyday life. But if in addition the person to whom we are speaking is, as Albertine was for me, someone whose upbringing is inconceivable, whose inclinations and principles, even the books she reads, are a mystery to us, then we cannot tell whether our words have any more semblance of meaning for her than they would have if we tried to explain ourselves to an animal. Trying to strike up a relationship with Albertine felt like relating to the unknown, or even the impossible, an exercise as difficult as training a horse, as restful95 as keeping bees or growing roses.
Some hours before, I had believed Albertine would give me only a distant nod. Now we had just agreed to an outing together. I resolved that, the next time I met her, I would be more forward; and I drew up a detailed scheme for what to say to her and even, since I had a strong impression that she was not overburdened by virtue, for all the pleasures she would lend herself to at my suggestion. But the mind is as susceptible to influence as any plant, any cell, any chemical elements; and the milieu which modifies it is the circumstances by which it is surrounded, a new setting. The presence of Albertine was enough to make me different; and when I was next with her the things I said were also completely different from what I had planned. Then, remembering her flushed temple, I wondered whether she might not be more appreciative of a kindness on my part which she would know was not self-interested. I was also perplexed by some looks she gave me, a way she had of smiling. They might be taken to mean easy virtue; but they might also mean the guileless if silly gaiety of a girl who, though vivacious, is fundamentally virtuous. There being more than one connotation for a single expression, whether on her face or in her speech, I was as hesitant as a pupil faced with the difficulties of a Greek unseen.
On this occasion, almost without delay we met the tall girl, Andrée, the one who had jumped over the First President;96 and Albertine had to introduce me. Her friend’s face was lighted by eyes that were extraordinarily limpid, as a dimly lit flat is brightened through an open bedroom door by the sunshine and greenish glow reflected up from the sea.
Five gentlemen walked past; since the beginning of my stay at Balbec, I had come to know all of them well by sight, and had often wondered who they might be. ‘They’re not very posh people, Albertine said, with a snigger of contempt. Take a look at that little old bloke with the dyed hair and the yellow gloves! Isn’t he the limit? Well, he’s the local dentist, not a bad old bloke, actually. The fat one’s the Mayor. I don’t mean the little fat one – you must have seen him, he’s the dancing-master; he’s a bit of a brute too: he can’t stand us because we make too much noise at the Casino, we demolish his chairs, we want to dance with the carpet rolled up, so he’s never given us the prize, though we’re the only ones that can dance! The dentist’s quite a nice bloke, and I wouldn’t have minded saying hello to him just to annoy the dancing-master, but I couldn’t because that’s M. de Sainte-Croix with them, the member of the Conseil général,97 a gentleman of very good family but who’s gone over to the Republicans now, for money – all proper people ignore him totally. He knows my uncle, because of the government, but the rest of my family cut him dead. The thin one in the raincoat is the conductor of the orchestra. What? You don’t know him? His playing’s divine! You didn’t go and hear Cavalleria Rusticana?98 Oh, I think it’s just lovely! He’s giving a concert this evening but we can’t go because it’s in the Town Hall – the Casino’s all right, but the Town Hall’s out of bounds: they’ve gone and taken down the crucifix99 and Andrée’s mother would throw forty fits if we went! I know my aunt’s husband’s in the government, but I can’t help that – my aunt may be my aunt, but that doesn’t make me like her, you know! She has only ever wanted one thing – to get rid of me. The only person who was ever anything like a mother to me – and who really deserves double credit for it, as she’s not even family – is a friend that I actually love like a mother. I’ll show you a photo of her.’ We were briefly joined by the golf champion and baccarat player, Octave. I thought I might have discovered a link between us, on learning from the conversation that he had some slight family relationship with the Verdurins, who were also rather fond of him. However, he disparaged the celebrated Wednesdays, and added that M. Verdurin was ignorant of the proper wearing of the dinner-jacket, which made it pretty embarrassin
g to encounter him in certain music-halls, where one would rather not be accosted by a gentleman wearing an ordinary suit and a black tie, looking like a village notary up in town and calling out, ‘Good evening, whipper-snapper!’ Octave walked on; and soon afterwards Andrée also left us, as we had reached her chalet. She went in, having said not a single word to me throughout the whole walk. I was sorry to see her disappear, especially because, while I was remarking to Albertine how unfriendly her friend had been, and mentally comparing the difficulty Albertine appeared to have in letting me make the acquaintance of her girl-friends with the reluctance Elstir had also seemed to encounter on the very first day in trying to effect the same thing, two young girls passed, the d’Ambresac sisters, whom I greeted and to whom Albertine also said good morning.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 57
