In Search of Lost Time (58 page)

One day, during the longest period of calm he had yet been able to go through without suffering renewed attacks of jealousy, he had agreed to go to the theatre that evening with the Princesse des Laumes. Having opened the newspaper, in order to find out what was being played, the sight of the title,
Les Filles de Marbre
by Théodore Barrière,
¹⁰⁷
struck him such a painful blow that he recoiled and turned his head away. Illuminated as though by footlights, in the new spot where it had appeared, the word ‘marble', which he had lost the ability to distinguish because he was so used to seeing it before his eyes, had suddenly become visible again and had immediately reminded him of the story Odette had told him once long ago, about a visit she had made to the Salon du Palais de l'Industrie with Mme Verdurin, where the latter had said to her: ‘Watch yourself, now! I know how to melt you. You're not made of marble, you know.' Odette had sworn to him it was only a joke, and he had attached no importance to it. But he had had more confidence in her at that time than he did now. And in fact the anonymous letter mentioned love affairs of that kind. Without daring to lift his eyes to the newspaper again, he unfolded it, turned a page in order not to see the words ‘
Les Filles de Marbre
', and mechanically began reading news from the provinces. There had been a storm on the Channel, damage was reported at Dieppe, Cabourg, Beuzeval. Immediately he recoiled again.

The name Beuzeval had reminded him of the name of another place in the same area, Beuzeville, whose name is joined by a hyphen to another, Bréauté, which he had often seen on maps, but without ever noticing before that it was the same as that of his friend M. de Bréauté, whom the anonymous letter mentioned as having been Odette's lover. In fact, in the case of M. de Bréauté, the accusation was not unlikely; but so far as Mme Verdurin was concerned, it was a sheer impossibility. From the fact that Odette sometimes lied, one could not conclude that she never told the truth and, in the remarks she had exchanged with Mme Verdurin and which she herself had described to Swann, he had recognized those pointless and dangerous jokes made, from inexperience of life and ignorance of vice, by women whose innocence they merely reveal and who – like Odette for example – are least prone to feel passionate love for another woman. Whereas on the contrary, the indignation with which she had denied the suspicions she had involuntarily aroused in him for a moment by her story squared with all he knew about his mistress's tastes and temperament. But at this moment, through one of those inspirations common to jealous men, analogous to that which reveals to a poet or scientist who has still only one rhyme or one observation the idea or law that will give them all their effective power, Swann recalled for the first time a remark Odette had made to him fully two years before: ‘Oh, Mme Verdurin! – all she can think about these days is me. I'm her little pet. She kisses me, and she wants me to go shopping with her, and she wants me to call her
tu
.'
¹⁰⁸
Far from seeing, at the time, any sort of connection between this comment and the absurd remarks meant to simulate some sort of depravity which Odette had reported to him, he had welcomed it as proof of a warm friendship. Now the memory of Mme Verdurin's affection had suddenly come to join the memory of her unseemly conversation. He could no longer separate them in his mind and saw them mingled in reality too, the affection lending something serious and important to the jokes which in return caused the affection to lose some of its innocence. He went to Odette's house. He sat down at a distance from her. He did not dare kiss her, not knowing whether it would be affection or anger that a kiss would provoke, either in her, or in himself. He said nothing, he watched their love die. Suddenly he made up his mind.

– Odette, he said to her, my dear, I know I'm being hateful, but there are a few things I must ask you. Do you remember the idea I had about you and Mme Verdurin? Tell me, was it true, with her or with anyone else?

She shook her head pursing her lips, a sign people often use to answer that they will not go, that it bores them, if someone asks: ‘Would you like to come watch the cavalcade go past, will you be at the review?' But a shake of the head thus usually assigned to an event in the future, for this reason colours with some uncertainty the denial of an event that is past. What is more it suggests only reasons of personal propriety rather than reprobation, a moral impossibility. When he saw Odette make this sign to him that it was untrue, Swann understood that it was perhaps true.

– I've already told you. You know perfectly well, she added, looking irritated and unhappy.

– Yes, I know, but are you sure? Don't say, ‘You know perfectly well'; say, ‘I have never done anything of that sort with any woman.'

She repeated, as though it were a lesson, ironically, and as if she wanted to get rid of him:

– I have never done anything of that sort with any woman.

– Can you swear it on your medal of Our Lady of Laghet?

Swann knew Odette would never swear a false oath on that medal.

– Oh, you make me so unhappy! she exclaimed, abruptly dodging the grasp of his question. Aren't you done yet? What's the matter with you today? Are you determined to make me hate you, to make me detest you? You see? – I wanted to have a nice time with you again, the way we used to, and this is how you thank me!

However, not letting her go, like a surgeon waiting for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but will not make him abandon it:

– You're quite wrong to imagine I would hold it against you in the least, Odette, he said to her with a persuasive and deceptive gentleness. I only talk to you about what I know, and I always know much more about it than I say. But only you can mitigate by your confession what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by other people. My anger towards you does not come from your actions, I
forgive you for everything because I love you, but from your duplicity, the absurd duplicity which makes you persist in denying things I know already. How can you expect me to go on loving you when I see you insisting upon, swearing to, something I know is untrue? Odette, don't prolong this moment which is agony for us both. If you want to, you can end it in a second, you'll be free of it for ever. Tell me on your medal, yes or no, if you have ever done these things.

– But I have no idea, she exclaimed angrily, maybe a very long time ago, without realizing what I was doing, maybe two or three times.

Swann had envisaged all the possibilities. Reality is therefore something that has no relation to possibilities, any more than the stab of a knife in our body has any relation to the gradual motions of the clouds over our head, since those words ‘two or three times' carved a kind of cross in the tissue of his heart. Strange that the words ‘two or three times', no more than words, words spoken into the air, at a distance, can lacerate the heart this way as if they had really touched it, can make you as sick as if you had swallowed poison. Involuntarily Swann thought of the remark he had heard at Mme de Saint-Euverte's: ‘That's the most powerful thing I've seen since the table-turning.' This pain he was experiencing was like nothing he had believed. Not only because in the hours when he most entirely distrusted her he had rarely imagined such an extremity of evil, but because, even when he did imagine this thing, it remained vague, uncertain, not clothed in the particular horror that had escaped with the words ‘maybe two or three times', not armed with that specific cruelty as different from everything he had known as a disease with which one is stricken for the first time. And yet Odette, from whom all this harm came to him, was no less dear to him, quite the contrary, more precious, as if at the same rate that his suffering increased, the value of the sedative increased, of the antidote which only this woman possessed. He wanted to devote more care to her, as to a disease which one suddenly discovers is more serious. He wanted the frightful thing she had told him she had done ‘two or three times' not to be repeated. For this, he had to watch over Odette. People often say that when we inform a friend of his mistress's wrongdoings, we succeed only in attaching him to her more closely
because he places no faith in them, but how much more so if he does place faith in them! But, said Swann to himself, how could he manage to protect her? He could perhaps keep her safe from a particular woman, but there were hundreds of others, and he realized what madness had come over him when he had begun, on the evening when he had not found Odette at the Verdurins', to want something that was always impossible – to possess another person. Happily for Swann, underneath the new sufferings that had just entered his soul like hordes of invaders, there lay a natural foundation, older, gentler and silently industrious, like the cells of an injured organ that immediately set about preparing to mend the damaged tissues, like the muscles of a paralysed limb that try to resume their former movements. For a time, these older, more autochthonous inhabitants of his soul employed all Swann's strength in this dim restorative work that gives one an illusion of repose while convalescing, after an operation. This time it was not so much, as it usually was, in Swann's brain that this slackening due to exhaustion took effect, it was rather in his heart. But all the things in life that have once existed tend to recur, and like a dying animal shaken one last time by the throes of a convulsion which seemed to have ended, on Swann's heart, spared for a moment, the same suffering returned of its own volition to cut the same cross again. He remembered those moonlit evenings when, lying back in the victoria that was taking him to the rue La Pérouse, he would voluptuously cultivate within himself the emotions of a man in love, without knowing the poisoned fruit they would necessarily bear. But all these thoughts did not last more than the space of a second, the time he took to bring his hand to his heart, catch his breath and manage a smile to hide his agony. Already he was beginning to ask his questions again. For his jealousy, which had taken pains an enemy would not have taken to strike this blow, to introduce him to the most intense suffering he had yet known, did not believe he had suffered enough and sought to expose him to a wound that was deeper still. Thus, like a wicked deity, his jealousy inspired Swann and pushed him to his ruin. It was not his fault but only Odette's if at first his torment did not grow worse.

– My dear, he said to her, it's in the past now. Was it with anyone I know?

– No, of course not, I swear it wasn't. And anyway, I think I exaggerated, I don't think I went that far.

He smiled and went on:

– As you like. It doesn't really matter, but it's too bad you can't tell me the name. If I could picture the person it would keep me from ever thinking about her again. I say this for your own sake, because I wouldn't be bothering you about it any more. It's such a relief to be able to picture a thing! The truly horrifying things are the ones you can't imagine. But you've already been so kind, I don't want to tire you. I do thank you with all my heart for all the good you've done me. I'm quite finished now. Only this last question: ‘How long ago was it?'

– Oh, Charles! Don't you see you're killing me? It's all so long ago. I never gave it another thought. And now it's as if you're positively trying to put those ideas in my head again. A lot of good it'll do you, she said, with unthinking foolishness and deliberate spite.

– Oh, I only wanted to know if it had happened since I've known you! It would be natural enough. Did it happen here? Could you tell me which particular evening, so that I could picture what I was doing at the time? I'm sure you realize it isn't possible that you don't remember who it was with, Odette, my love.

– Oh I don't know, really, I think it was in the Bois one evening when you came to meet us on the island. You had had dinner with the Princesse des Laumes, she said, happy to give him a specific detail that would attest to her truthfulness. There was a woman at the next table; I hadn't seen her for ages. She said to me: ‘Come around behind that little rock there and see how the moonlight looks on the water.' At first I just yawned and said: ‘No, I'm tired and I'm quite comfortable where I am.' She swore there had never been such moonlight. I said to her: ‘I've heard that sort of story before!' I knew quite well what she was after.

Odette told this almost with a smile, either because it seemed to her quite natural, or because she thought she would thereby make it seem less important, or so as not to appear humiliated. At the sight of Swann's face, she changed her tone:

– You're a scoundrel, you like tormenting me, making me invent lies which I only tell you so that you'll leave me in peace.

This second blow which Swann suffered was even more agonizing than the first. Never had he supposed the thing had been so recent, hidden from his eyes that had not been able to discover it, not in a past which he had not known, but among evenings which he recalled so clearly, which he had experienced with Odette, which he had believed he knew so well and which now assumed in retrospect an appearance that was two-faced and agonizing; among them suddenly there opened up this wide gap, this moment on the island in the Bois. Odette, without being intelligent, had the charm of naturalness. She had described, she had mimed this scene with such simplicity that Swann, breathless, saw everything: Odette's yawn, the little rock. He heard her answer – gaily, alas! –: ‘I've heard that sort of story before!' He felt she would say nothing more this evening, there was no new revelation to expect just now; he said to her: ‘My poor dear, forgive me, I feel I'm hurting you, it's over and done with, I'm not thinking about it any more.'

But she saw that his eyes were still dwelling on the things he did not know and on that past of their love, monotonous and sweet in his memory because it was vague, which was now being torn open like a wound by that minute on the island in the Bois, in the moonlight, after the dinner with the Princesse des Laumes. But he was so much in the habit by now of finding life interesting – of admiring the curious discoveries one can make – that even while suffering to the point of believing he could not endure such pain for long, he said to himself: ‘Life is really astonishing; it really has great surprises in store for us; immorality is actually more common than one would think. Here's a woman I trusted, who seemed so simple, so honest in any case, even if she was rather flighty, who seemed quite normal and healthy in her tastes; after an unlikely denunciation I question her, and the little she admits reveals much more than what one would have suspected.' But he could not confine himself to these disinterested remarks. He tried to estimate the exact value of what she had told him, in order to know if he ought to conclude that she had done these things often, that they would happen again. He repeated to himself the words she had said: ‘I knew quite well what she was after', ‘Two or three times', ‘I've heard that sort of story before!', but they did not reappear in Swann's
memory disarmed, each of them held a knife and with it struck him another blow. For a very long time, just as an invalid cannot stop himself from trying over and over again to make the motion that is painful to him, he repeated these words to himself: ‘I'm quite comfortable here', ‘I've heard that sort of story before!', but the pain was so intense he had to stop. He marvelled that acts which he had always judged so superficially, so gaily, had now become as serious as a moral illness. He certainly knew some women he could have asked to keep an eye on Odette. But how could he hope they would adopt the same point of view he now had and not hold on to the point of view he had had for so long, that had always guided him in love affairs, would not say to him, laughing: ‘You nasty jealous man – trying to rob others of a little pleasure'? By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had he (who in the past had derived only refined pleasures from his love for Odette) been roughly dropped into this new circle of hell from which he could not see how he would ever get out? Poor Odette! He did not hold it against her. She was only half guilty. Didn't people say it was her own mother who had handed her over to a rich Englishman in Nice when she was hardly more than a child? But what painful truth was now contained for him in those lines from
Journal d'un Poète
by Alfred de Vigny
¹⁰⁹
which he had read with indifference in the past: ‘When you feel you are falling in love with a woman, you ought to say to yourself: Who are her friends? What sort of life has she had? All one's future happiness depends upon it.' Swann was surprised that simple statements spelled out by his mind, like ‘I've heard that sort of story before!', ‘I could see very well what she was after' could hurt him so. But he realized that what he believed to be simple statements were merely parts of the framework that still contained, and could give back to him, the pain he had felt during Odette's story. For it was indeed the same pain which he was feeling again. For all that he now knew – for all that he had even, as time passed, forgotten a little, forgiven – the moment he said these words to himself again, the old suffering made him once again what he had been before Odette spoke: ignorant, trustful; his cruel jealousy placed him once again, so that he might be wounded by Odette's confession, in the position of a man who does not yet know, and after several months this old story still upset him
like a revelation. He admired the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only by the weakening of that generative force, whose fecundity diminishes with age, that he could hope for an easing of his torment. But as soon as the power of any one of Odette's remarks to make him suffer seemed nearly exhausted, then one of those on which Swann's mind had dwelt less until then, a remark that was almost new, would come to relieve the others and strike at him with undiminished vigour. The memory of the evening when he had dined with the Princesse des Laumes was painful to him, but it was only the core of his disease. The latter spread confusedly on all sides through the days before and after it. And whatever point in it he tried to touch in his memories, it was the whole of that season, during which the Verdurins had dined so often on the island in the Bois, that hurt him. Hurt him so badly that gradually the curiosity which his jealousy kept provoking in him was neutralized by his fear of the new torments he would inflict on himself by satisfying it. He realized that the entire period of Odette's life that had elapsed before she met him, a period he had never tried to picture, was not the abstract expanse which he could vaguely see, but had consisted of specific years, each filled with concrete incidents. But if he came to know them, he was afraid that that past of hers, colourless, fluid and tolerable, might assume a body that was tangible and loathsome, a face that was individual and diabolical. And he continued to refrain from trying to imagine it, no longer from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He hoped that one day he might at last be able to hear the name of the island in the Bois, of the Princesse des Laumes, without feeling the old tearing at his heart, and thought it would be imprudent to provoke Odette into supplying him with new remarks, names of places, different circumstances which, when his illness was still scarcely abated, would reawaken it again in another form.