In Search of Lost Time (16 page)

But if the actors preoccupied me so, if the sight of Maubaut coming out of the Théâtre-Français one afternoon had filled me with the ecstasy and suffering of love, how much more did the name of a star blazing on the door of a theatre, how much more did the sight, at the window of a brougham passing in the street, its horses blossoming with roses in their headbands, of a woman I thought might be an actress, leave me in a state of prolonged disturbance, as I tried impotently and painfully to imagine her life! I would rank the most illustrious in order of talent, Sarah Bernhardt, La Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary, but all of them interested me. Now my uncle knew many of them and also some courtesans whom I did not distinguish clearly from the actresses. He would entertain them at home. And if we went to see him only on certain days, that was because on the other days women came whom his family could not have met, or so at least they thought, since my uncle himself, on the contrary, was only too ready to pay pretty widows who had perhaps never been married, and countesses with high-sounding names which were doubtless only assumed names, the courtesy of introducing them to my grandmother or even of presenting them with some of the family jewels, tendencies which had already embroiled him more than once with my grandfather. Often, when an actres's name came into the conversation, I would hear my father say to my mother, smiling: ‘A friend of your uncle's'; and I would think that the novitiate pointlessly endured for perhaps years on end by eminent men at the door of some woman who would not answer their letters and would ask her doorman to turn them away could have been spared a boy like me by my uncle, who could introduce him in his own home to the actress who, unapproachable by so many others, was for him an intimate friend.

And so – using the excuse that a lesson which had been moved now came at such an awkward hour that it had prevented me several times and would continue to prevent me from seeing my uncle – one day,
different from the day set apart for the visits we made to him, taking advantage of the fact that my parents had had lunch early, I went out and, instead of going to look at the column of posters, for which I was allowed to go out alone, I ran to him. I noticed in front of his door a carriage with two horses, each of which had a red carnation at its blinkers, as did the coachman in his buttonhole. From the staircase I heard a laugh and a woman' voice, and, as soon as I rang, a silence, then the sound of doors being shut. The valet came to open the door, and when he saw me seemed embarrassed, told me my uncle was very busy, probably would not be able to see me and when he went to let him know anyway, the same voice I had heard before said: ‘Oh, yes! do let him come in; just for a minute, I would enjoy it so much. In the photograph you have on your desk, he looks so much like his mother, your niece; that' her photograph next to his, isn't it? I would so like to see him, just for a moment, I would so like to see the boy.'

I heard my uncle grumble, become cross, finally the valet showed me in.

On the table, there was the same plate of marzipan as always; my uncle had on his usual jacket, but across from him, in a pink silk dress with a long string of pearls around her neck, sat a young woman who was eating the last of a tangerine. My uncertainty as to whether I should call her Madame or Mademoiselle made me blush and, not daring to turn my eyes too much in her direction for fear of having to talk to her, I went to kiss my uncle. She looked at me, smiling, my uncle said to her: ‘My nephew,' without telling her my name, or telling me hers, probably because, ever since the difficulties he had had with my grandfather, he had been trying as far as possible to avoid any association of his family with this sort of acquaintance.

– How much like his mother he is, she said.

– But you've never seen my niece except in a photograph, said my uncle brusquely.

– I beg your pardon, my dear friend, I passed her on the stairs last year when you were so ill. It' true that I saw her for only a split second and your stairs are quite dark, but that was enough for me to admire her. This young man has her beautiful eyes and also
that
, she said, drawing a line with her finger along the lower part of her
forehead. Does Madame, your niece, have the same name as you, my dear? she asked my uncle.

– He looks like his father more than anyone, muttered my uncle, who was no more anxious to introduce them at a distance by saying Mama' name than to do so at close quarters. ‘He is exactly like his father and also my poor mother.

– I don't know his father, said the lady in pink with a slight inclination of her head, and I never knew your poor mother, my dear. You remember, it was shortly after your bereavement that we met.'

I was feeling a little disappointed, because this young lady was no different from the other pretty women I had sometimes seen in my family, in particular the daughter of a cousin of ours to whose house I went every year on the 1st of January. Better dressed, only, my uncle' friend had the same quick and kind glance, she seemed as open and affectionate. In her I found no trace of the theatrical appearance that I admired in photographs of actresses, nor of the diabolical expression that would have suited the life she must lead. I had trouble believing she was a courtesan and I especially would not have believed she was a stylish courtesan, if I had not seen the carriage and pair, the pink dress, the pearl necklace, if I had not known that my uncle was acquainted only with those of the highest sort. But I wondered how the millionaire who had given her her carriage and her house and her jewels could enjoy squandering his fortune on a person whose appearance was so simple and proper. And yet, as I thought about what her life must be like, the immorality of it disturbed me perhaps more than if it had taken concrete form before my eyes in some special guise – it was so invisible, like the secret of some romantic story, of some scandal which had driven out of the home of her bourgeois parents and consigned to the public, which had brought to a bloom of beauty and raised to the
demi-monde
and to notoriety, this woman, the play of whose features, the intonations of whose voice, the same as so many others I knew already, made me consider her despite myself to be a young woman from a good family, though she was no longer from any family.

We had gone into the ‘study', and my uncle, appearing somewhat ill at ease because of my presence, offered her a cigarette.

– No, she said, my dear, you know I've become used to the ones the grand-duke sends me. I told him you were jealous. And from a case she drew cigarettes covered with gilded foreign writing. ‘Why yes, she added abruptly, I must have met this young man' father at your house. Isn't he your nephew? How could I have forgotten it? He was so good, so exquisite to me,' she said modestly and sensitively. But as I thought about what might have been my father' rude greeting which she said she had found so exquisite, I, who knew his reserve and his coldness, was embarrassed, as by an indelicacy he had committed, by this disparity between the excessive gratitude that was bestowed on him and his insufficient friendliness. It seemed to me later that it was one of the touching aspects of the role of these idle and studious women that they devote their generosity, their talent, a free-floating dream of beauty in love – for, like artists, they do not carry it to fruition, do not bring it into the framework of a shared existence – and a gold that costs them little, to enrich with a precious and refined setting the rough and ill-polished lives of men. And just as this one filled the smoking-room, where my uncle was wearing a jacket to receive her, with her gentle person, her dress of pink silk, her pearls, the elegance emanating from the friendship of a grand-duke, so in the same way she had taken some insignificant remark of my father', had worked it delicately, turned it, given it a precious appellation, and enchasing it with one of her glances of the finest water, tinged with humility and gratitude, had given it back changed into an artistic jewel, into something ‘completely exquisite'.

– Come now, it' time for you to go, my uncle said to me.

I stood up, I had an irresistible desire to kiss the hand of the lady in pink, but it seemed to me this would have been something as bold as an abduction. My heart pounded as I said to myself: ‘Should I do it, should I not do it,' then I stopped asking myself what I should do so as to be able to do something. And with a blind and senseless gesture divested of all the reasons I had found in its favour a moment ago, I carried to my lips the hand she was holding out to me.

– How nice he is! How gallant! Why, the boy' a bit of a ladies' man already: he takes after his uncle. He'll be a perfect
gentleman
,
⁸
she added, clenching her teeth to give the phrase a slightly British accent.
Couldn't he come have
a cup of tea
with me sometime, as our neighbours the English say? He need only send me a ‘blue'
⁹
in the morning.

I did not know what a ‘blue' was. I did not understand half the words the lady said, but my fear that there was some question concealed in them which it would have been impolite of me not to answer made me keep on listening to them with close attention, and this made me very tired.

– Oh no, that's not possible, said my uncle, shrugging his shoulders, he's very busy, he works hard. He wins all the prizes at school, he added in a low voice so that I would not hear this lie and contradict it. Who knows? Perhaps the boy will be a little Victor Hugo, another Vaulabelle,
¹⁰
you know.

– I adore artists, answered the lady in pink, they're the only ones who understand women… Besides a few superior creatures like you. Excuse my ignorance, my dear, but who is Vaulabelle? Is it those gilt-edged volumes in the little glass bookcase in your sitting room? You know you promised to lend them to me, I'll take great care of them.

My uncle, who hated lending his books, said nothing in answer and took me to the front hall. Crazed with love for the lady in pink, I covered my old uncle's tobacco-filled cheeks with mad kisses, and, while with some embarrassment he let me know without venturing to tell me openly that he would just as soon I not talk about this visit to my parents, I said to him, tears in my eyes, that the memory of his goodness was so powerful within me that one day I would certainly find the means to show him my gratitude. It was so powerful, in fact, that two hours later, after a few mysterious phrases that did not seem to me to give my parents a distinct enough idea of the new importance with which I was endowed, I found it more explicit to describe to them every last detail of the visit I had just paid. I did not think that in doing this I was causing problems for my uncle. How could I have thought that, since I did not want that? And I could not imagine that my parents would see any harm in a visit in which I saw none. Doesn't it happen every day that a friend asks us to be sure to apologize for him to a woman to whom he has been prevented from writing, and
that we neglect to do it, feeling that this person cannot attach any importance to a silence that has none for us? I imagined, like everyone else, that the brain of another person was an inert and docile receptacle, without the power to react specifically to what one introduced into it; and I did not doubt that in depositing in my parents' brains the news of the acquaintance I had made through my uncle, I was transmitting to them at the same time, as I wished to, the kindly opinion that I had of this introduction. My parents unfortunately deferred to principles entirely different from those I was suggesting they adopt, when they wished to appraise my uncle's action. My father and grandfather had some violent arguments with him; of this, I was indirectly informed. A few days later, encountering my uncle outdoors as he was passing in an open carriage, I was filled with all the pain, the gratitude, the remorse that I would have liked to express to him. Compared to their immensity, I felt that raising my hat would be shabby and might make my uncle think I did not believe I owed him more than an ordinary sort of courtesy. I decided to refrain from that inadequate gesture and I turned my head away. My uncle thought that in doing this I was following my parents' orders, he did not forgive them, and he died many years later without any of us ever seeing him again.

And so I no longer went into my Uncle Adolphe's sitting-room, now closed, and would linger in the vicinity of the scullery until Françoise emerged from her temple into the yard and said to me: ‘I'm going to let my kitchen-maid serve the coffee and take up the hot water, I must fly to Mme Octave,' when I would decide to go back in and would go straight upstairs to read in my room. The kitchen-maid was an abstract entity, a permanent institution whose invariable set of attributes assured her a sort of continuity and identity, through the succession of temporary forms in which she was incarnated, for we never had the same one two years running. The year we ate so much asparagus, the kitchen-maid usually given the job of ‘scraping' them was a poor, sickly creature, in a state of pregnancy already rather advanced when we arrived at Easter, and we were in fact surprised that Françoise allowed her to do so many errands and so much heavy work, for she was beginning to have difficulty carrying before her the mysterious basket, rounder every day, whose magnificent form one
could divine under her ample smocks. These smocks reminded me of the cloaks worn by certain of Giotto's symbolic figures, photographs of whom I had been given by M. Swann. He himself was the one who had pointed this out to us and when he asked for news of the kitchen-maid he would say: ‘How is Giotto's Charity?' What was more, she herself, poor girl, fattened by her pregnancy even in her face, even in her cheeks, which descended straight and square, rather resembled, in fact, those strong, mannish virgins, matrons really, in whom the virtues are personified in the Arena. And I realize now that those Virtues and Vices of Padua
¹¹
resembled her in still another way. Just as the image of this girl was increased by the added symbol she carried before her belly without appearing to understand its meaning, without expressing in her face anything of its beauty and spirit, as a mere heavy burden, in the same way the powerful housewife who is represented at the Arena below the name ‘Caritas', and a reproduction of whom hung on the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, embodies this virtue without seeming to suspect it, without any thought of charity seeming ever to have been capable of being expressed by her vulgar, energetic face. Through a lovely invention of the painter, she is trampling upon the treasures of the earth, but absolutely as if she were treading grapes to extract their juice or rather as she would have climbed on some sacks to raise herself up; and she holds out to God her flaming heart, or, to put it more exactly, she ‘hands' it to him, as a cook hands a corkscrew through the skylight of her cellar to someone who is asking her for it at the ground-floor window. Envy, too, might have had more of a particular expression of envy. But in this fresco too, the symbol occupies such a large place and is represented as so real, the serpent hissing at the lips of Envy is so fat, it fills her wide-open mouth so completely, that the muscles of her face are distended to contain it, like those of a child swelling a balloon with its breath, and that Envy's attention – and ours along with it – entirely concentrated as it is on the action of her lips, has scarcely any time for envious thoughts.