In Search of Lost Time (35 page)

‘You know, Mme Verdurin had said to her husband, I believe we're steering the wrong course when we belittle our gifts to the doctor out of modesty. He's a man of science, out of touch with the practical side of life, he has no idea of the value of things and relies on what we tell him. – I hadn't dared say anything to you, but I had noticed,' answered M. Verdurin. And the following New Year's Day, instead of sending Doctor Cottard a three-thousand-franc ruby, remarking that it was only a trifle, M. Verdurin paid three hundred francs for an artificial stone, implying that it would be hard to find one as beautiful.

When Mme Verdurin had announced that they would be having M.
Swann at the soirée, ‘Swann?' the doctor had exclaimed in a tone of voice made rough by surprise, for the slightest piece of news always caught him more off guard than anyone else, though this was a man who believed he was perpetually prepared for anything. And seeing that no one answered him, ‘Swann? Who's this Swann?' he roared, filled with an anxiety that suddenly abated when Mme Verdurin said: ‘Why, the friend Odette told us about. – Ah, good, good! That's all right then,' answered the doctor, pacified. As for the painter, he was delighted by the introduction of Swann to Mme Verdurin's, because he assumed Swann was in love with Odette and he liked to encourage love affairs. ‘There's nothing I enjoy more than arranging a marriage, he confided in Doctor Cottard's ear. I've already managed a good many, even between women!'

By telling the Verdurins that Swann was very ‘
smart
', Odette had awoken in them the fear that he would be a ‘bore'. However, he made an excellent impression, of which, without their knowing it, his association with fashionable society was one of the indirect causes. He had, in fact, over men who have never mixed in high society, even intelligent men, one of the superior qualities of those who have had some experience of it, which is that they no longer transfigure it out of the desire or the horror it inspires in their imagination, they consider it unimportant. Their friendliness, disassociated from any snobbery and from a fear of seeming too friendly, quite independent, has that ease, that grace characteristic of the motions of people whose supple limbs perform exactly what they want, without any indiscreet or awkward participation of the rest of the body. The simple elementary gymnastics of a man of the world extending his hand with good grace to the unknown young man who is being introduced to him, and bowing with reserve to the ambassador to whom he is being introduced, had in the end passed, without his being aware of it, into Swann's whole social attitude, so that towards people of a social circle inferior to his like the Verdurins and their friends he instinctively displayed a marked attention, permitted himself to make advances, from which, according to them, a bore would have refrained. He had a moment of coldness only with Cottard: seeing the doctor wink at him and smile ambiguously before they had spoken to each other (a dumb-show that
Cottard called ‘wait-and-see'), Swann thought the doctor probably recognized him from a previous encounter in some house of pleasure, even though he himself went to such places very seldom, having never lived in a world of debauchery. Finding the allusion in bad taste, especially in the presence of Odette, who might receive a poor impression of him from it, he assumed an icy manner. But when he learned that the lady standing near him was Mme Cottard, he thought that such a young husband would not have tried to allude to amusements of that sort in front of his wife; and he ceased to give the doctor's knowing look the meaning he had feared. The painter immediately invited Swann to come to his studio with Odette; Swann thought he was nice. ‘Perhaps he'll favour you more than he has me, said Mme Verdurin in a tone of mock resentment, perhaps he'll show you Cottard's portrait' (she had commissioned it from the painter). ‘Make sure, “Monsieur” Biche,' she reminded the painter, whom it was a sacred joke to address as Monsieur, ‘to capture that nice look in his eye, that subtle, amusing little way he has of looking at you. As you know, what I want most of all is his smile; what I asked you for was a portrait of his smile.' And since the phrase seemed to her noteworthy, she repeated it very loudly to make sure a number of guests heard it, and even, using some vague pretext, summoned a few of them over to her first. Swann asked to be introduced to everyone, even to an old friend of the Verdurins, Saniette, whose shyness, simplicity and good nature had lost him all the esteem he had won by his skill as an archivist, his substantial fortune and the distinguished family he came from. When he talked, there was a sort of mushy sound to his pronunciation that was charming because one sensed that it betrayed not so much an impediment in his speech as a quality of his soul, a sort of vestige of early childhood innocence that he had never lost. Each consonant he could not pronounce appeared to be another instance of a hardness of which he was incapable. In asking to be introduced to M. Saniette, Swann appeared to Mme Verdurin to be reversing roles (to the degree that in response, she said, insisting on the difference: ‘Monsieur Swann, would you have the goodness to allow me to introduce to you our friend Saniette'), but aroused in Saniette a warm feeling of congeniality which the Verdurins, however,
never revealed to Swann, for Saniette irritated them a little, and they were not anxious to make friends for him. But, on the other hand, Swann touched them infinitely by believing he ought to ask immediately to be introduced to the pianist's aunt. She was in a black dress, as always, because she thought one always looked nice in black and that it was most distinguished, and her face was extremely red, as it always was after she had just eaten. She bowed to Swann with respect, but straightened with majesty. Because she had no education and was afraid of making mistakes in grammar, she deliberately pronounced things in a garbled way, thinking that if she made a blunder it would be fogged over by such indefiniteness that no one would be able to make it out with any certainty, so that her conversation was reduced to an indistinct hawking, from which emerged now and then the few vocables of which she felt confident. Swann thought he could poke a little fun at her when he was talking to M. Verdurin, but the latter was offended.

‘She's such an excellent woman, he answered. I grant you she's not brilliant; but I assure you she can be most agreeable when you talk to her on your own. – I don't doubt it, Swann hastened to concede. I meant to say she did not seem to me “eminent”, he added, isolating the adjective, and really that's rather a compliment! – Well, now, said M. Verdurin, this will surprise you: she writes charmingly. You've never heard her nephew? He's wonderful, isn't he, Doctor? Would you like me to ask him to play something, Monsieur Swann? – Why, it would be a joy…' Swann was beginning to answer, when the doctor interrupted him with a mocking look. In fact, having acquired the notion that in conversation, to be emphatic, to employ formal expressions was old-fashioned, as soon as he heard a solemn word used seriously, as the word ‘joy' had just been used, he thought the person who had uttered it had just been guilty of pomposity. And if, in addition, the word happened to occur in what he called an old cliché, however current it might be in other respects, the doctor would assume that the sentence that had been begun was ridiculous and would finish it ironically using the platitude he seemed to be accusing the speaker of having wanted to deploy, although the latter had never thought of it.

– A joy for ever! he cried mischievously, raising his arms for emphasis.

M. Verdurin could not help laughing.

– What are those good people laughing about! You don't seem to be having a bad time over there in your corner, cried Mme Verdurin. I hope you don't think I'm enjoying myself here in disgrace all by myself, she added in a tone of childish chagrin.

Mme Verdurin was sitting on a high Swedish chair of waxed pine, which she had been given by a violinist from that country and which she had kept, though it looked rather like a stool and was at odds with the beautiful old furniture that she had, but she insisted on keeping in evidence the gifts which the faithful regulars were in the habit of giving her from time to time, so that the givers would have the pleasure of spotting them when they came. And so she tried to persuade them to give her nothing but flowers and sweets, which are at least perishable; but she was not successful, and her home contained a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens, barometers and urns, in an accumulation of useless, repetitive and incongruous offerings.

From this elevated spot she participated energetically in the conversation of the faithful and enjoyed their banter, but after the accident involving her jaw, she had ceased to take pains to explode in true laughter and indulged, instead, in a conventional pantomime that signified, without fatigue or risk for her, that she was laughing to the point of tears. At the mildest remark fired off by a regular against a bore or against a former regular who had been flung back into the camp of the bores – and to the greatest despair of M. Verdurin, who for a long time had had pretensions of being as affable as his wife, but who, when laughing in earnest, would soon get out of breath and so had been outdistanced and defeated by this ruse of incessant and fictive hilarity – she would utter a little cry, tightly close her bird-like eyes, already slightly dimmed by leucoma, and abruptly, as if she had only just had time to avoid some indecent spectacle or avert a fatal blow, plunging her face in her hands, which covered it and hid it completely, would appear to be doing her best to suppress, to annihilate a fit of laughter which, had she given way to it, would have caused her to faint. So, dazed by the gaiety of the faithful, drunk with good-fellowship,
scandal and approbation, Mme Verdurin, poised on her perch, like a bird whose seed-cake has been soaked in warm wine, sobbed with affability.

Meanwhile, M. Verdurin, after asking Swann's permission to light his pipe (‘we don't stand on ceremony here, we're among friends'), begged the young musician to sit down at the piano.

– Now don't bother him, he didn't come here to be tormented, exclaimed Mme Verdurin, I won't have him tormented!

– But why on earth should it bother him? said M. Verdurin. Perhaps M. Swann doesn't know the Sonata in F sharp which we've discovered. He'll play the piano arrangement for us.

– Oh, no, no, not my sonata! cried Mme Verdurin. I don't want to have to cry until I get a head cold and neuralgia in my face, the way I did last time. Thanks for your offer, but I don't intend to repeat that performance. You're so kind, all of you; it's easy to see you're not the ones who will have to stay in bed for a week!

This little scene, which was re-enacted each time the pianist prepared to play, enchanted her friends as much as if it had been brand new, because it was proof of the ‘
Patronne
's'
¹³
charming originality and sensitivity to music. Those who were near her signalled to those farther away who were smoking or playing cards to come closer, that something was happening, saying to them, as they do in the Reichstag at interesting moments: ‘Listen, listen.' And the next day they would tell those who had not been able to be there how sorry they were, reporting that the scene had been even more entertaining than usual.

– Well, all right then, said M. Verdurin. He'll just play the andante.

– Just the andante! What are you saying! exclaimed Mme Verdurin. It's precisely the andante that completely paralyses me. Listen to the
Patron
! He's really marvellous! It's as if he said: in the
Ninth
we'll just hear the finale, or in
The Meistersingers
¹⁴
we'll just hear the overture.

The doctor, however, urged Mme Verdurin to let the pianist play, not because he thought the troubling effects the music had on her were feigned – he recognized certain neurasthenic symptoms in them – but from a habit which many doctors have, of immediately relaxing the severity of their prescriptions when something is involved that seems much more important to them, like some social gathering at
which they are present and in which the person they are advising for once to forget his dyspepsia or his flu is an essential factor.

– You won't become ill this time, you'll see, he told her, trying to hypnotize her with his eyes. And if you do, we'll look after you.

– Really and truly? answered Mme Verdurin, as if the hope of such a favour left her no alternative but to capitulate. Perhaps also, because she said she would be ill, there were times when she did not recall that it was a lie and took on the character of an ill person. For invalids, tired of always having to make the rarity of their attacks dependent on their prudence, like to indulge in the belief that they can with impunity do all of the things that give them pleasure and usually hurt them, as long as they put themselves in the hands of a powerful person who, without their having to take any pains, with a word or a pill will put them back on their feet.

Odette had gone to sit on a tapestry-covered couch near the piano:

– You know I have my own little spot, she said to Mme Verdurin. The latter, seeing Swann on a chair, made him get up:

– You're not very comfortable there: now go and sit next to Odette. You'll make room for M. Swann there, won't you, Odette?

– What a pretty Beauvais, said Swann before he sat down, trying to be pleasant.

– Oh, I'm glad you appreciate my couch, answered Mme Verdurin. And let me tell you, if you think you're ever going to see another one as beautiful, you may abandon the idea at once. They never did anything else like it. The little chairs are marvels too. You can look at them in a moment. Each bronze is an emblem that corresponds to the little subject on the chair; you know, you'll have a great deal to entertain you if you want to look at them. I can promise you a good time. Even the little friezes around the edges – look at that, look at the little vine against the red background in the Bear and the Grapes. Isn't it well drawn? What do you say? I think they really knew how to draw! Doesn't that vine make your mouth water? My husband claims I don't like the fruit you get from it because I don't eat as many as he does. The fact is, actually, I'm more of a glutton than any of you, but I don't need to put them in my mouth because I enjoy them with my eyes. What are you all laughing about, now? Ask the doctor,
he'll tell you – for me grapes are a regular purgative. Other people take the cure at Fontainebleau, I take my little Beauvais cure. But, Monsieur Swann, you won't go away without feeling the little bronzes on the backs! Isn't the patina soft? No, no – with your whole hand: feel them properly.