In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (70 page)

We formed that morning one of those couples who dotted the 'front'
here and there with their conjunction, their stopping together for
time enough just to exchange a few words before breaking apart, each
to resume separately his or her divergent stroll. I seized the
opportunity, while she stood still, to look again and discover once
and for all where exactly the little mole was placed. Then, just as a
phrase of Vinteuil which had delighted me in the sonata, and which my
recollection allowed to wander from the andante to the finale, until
the day when, having the score in my hands, I was able to find it, and
to fix it in my memory in its proper place, in the scherzo, so this
mole, which I had visualised now on her cheek, now on her chin, came
to rest for ever on her upper lip, just below her nose. In the same
way, too, do we come with amazement upon lines that we know by heart
in a poem in which we never dreamed that they were to be found.

At that moment, as if in order that against the sea there might
multiply in freedom, in the variety of its forms, all the rich
decorative whole which was the lovely unfolding of the train of
maidens, at once golden and rosy, baked by sun and wind, Albertine's
friends, with their shapely limbs, their supple figures, but so
different one from another, came into sight in a cluster that expanded
as it approached, advancing towards us, but keeping closer to the sea,
along a parallel line. I asked Albertine's permission to walk for a
little way with her. Unfortunately, all she did was to wave her hand
to them in greeting. "But your friends will be disappointed if you
don't go with them," I hinted, hoping that we might all walk together.
A young man with regular features, carrying a bag of golf–clubs,
sauntered up to us. It was the baccarat–player, whose fast ways so
enraged the chief magistrate's wife. In a frigid, impassive tone,
which he evidently regarded as an indication of the highest
refinement, he bade Albertine good day. "Been playing golf, Octave?"
she asked. "How did the game go? Were you in form?" "Oh, it's too
sickening; I can't play for nuts," he replied. "Was Andrée playing?"
"Yes, she went round in seventy–seven." "Why, that's a record!" "I
went round in eighty–two yesterday." He was the son of an immensely
rich manufacturer who was to take an important part in the
organisation of the coming World's Fair. I was struck by the extreme
degree to which, in this young man and in the other by no means
numerous male friends of the band of girls, the knowledge of
everything that pertained to clothes and how to wear them, cigars,
English drinks, horses, a knowledge which he possessed in its minutest
details with a haughty infallibility that approached the reticent
modesty of the true expert, had been developed in complete isolation,
unaccompanied by the least trace of any intellectual culture. He had
no hesitation as to the right time and place for dinner–jacket or
pyjamas, but neither had he any suspicion of the circumstances in
which one might or might not employ this or that word, or even of the
simplest rules of grammar. This disparity between the two forms of
culture must have existed also in his father, the President of the
Syndicate that 'ran' Balbec, for, in an open letter to the electors
which he had recently had posted on all the walls, he announced: "I
desired to see the Mayor, to speak to him of the matter; he would not
listen to my righteous plaint." Octave, at the Casino, took prizes in
all the dancing competitions, for bostons, tangos and what–not, an
accomplishment that would entitle him, if he chose, to make a fine
marriage in that seaside society where it is not figuratively but in
sober earnest that the young women 'marry their dancing–partners.' He
lighted a cigar with a "D'you mind?" to Albertine, as one who asks
permission to finish, while going on talking, an urgent piece of work.
For he was one of those people who can never be 'doing nothing,'
although there was nothing, for that matter, that he could ever be
said to do. And as complete inactivity has the same effect on us, in
the end, as prolonged overwork, and on the character as much as on the
life of body and muscles, the unimpaired nullity of intellect that was
enshrined behind Octave's meditative brow had ended by giving him,
despite his air of unruffled calm, ineffectual longings to think which
kept him awake at night, for all the world like an overwrought
philosopher.

Supposing that if I knew their male friends I should have more
opportunities of seeing the girls, I had been on the point of asking
for an introduction to Octave. I told Albertine this, as soon as he
had left us, still muttering, "I couldn't play for nuts!" I thought I
would thus put into her head the idea of doing it next time. "But I
can't," she cried, "introduce you to a tame cat like that. This place
simply swarms with them. But what on earth would they have to say to
you? That one plays golf quite well, and that's all there is to it. I
know what I'm talking about; you'd find he wasn't at all your sort."
"Your friends will be cross with you if you desert them like this," I
repeated, hoping that she would then suggest my joining the party.
"Oh, no, they don't want me." We ran into Bloch, who directed at me a
subtle, insinuating smile, and, embarrassed by the presence of
Albertine, whom he did not know, or, rather, knew 'without knowing'
her, bent his head with a stiff, almost irritated jerk. "What's he
called, that Ostrogoth?" Albertine asked. "I can't think why he should
bow to me; he doesn't know me. And I didn't bow to him, either." I had
no time to explain to her, for, bearing straight down upon us, "Excuse
me," he began, "for interrupting you, but I must tell you that I am
going to Doncières to–morrow. I cannot put it off any longer without
discourtesy; indeed, I ask myself, what must de Saint–Loup–en–Bray
think of me. I just came to let you know that I shall take the two
o'clock train. At your service." But I thought now only of seeing
Albertine again, and of trying to get to know her friends, and
Doncières, since they were not going there, and my going would bring
me back too late to see them still on the beach, seemed to me to be
situated at the other end of the world. I told Bloch that it was
impossible. "Oh, very well, I shall go alone. In the fatuous words of
Master Arouet, I shall say to Saint–Loup, to beguile his clericalism:

"I admit he's not a bad looking boy," was Albertine's comment, "but he
makes me feel quite sick." I had never thought that Bloch might be
'not a bad looking boy'; and yet, when one came to think of it, so he
was. With his rather prominent brow, very aquiline nose, and his air
of extreme cleverness and of being convinced of his cleverness, he had
a pleasing face. But he could not succeed in pleasing Albertine. This
was perhaps due, to some extent, to her own disadvantages, the
harshness, the want of feeling of the little band, its rudeness
towards everything that was not itself. And later on, when I
introduced them, Albertine's antipathy for him grew no less. Bloch
belonged to a section of society in which, between the free and easy
customs of the 'smart set' and the regard for good manners which a man
is supposed to shew who 'does not soil his hands,' a sort of special
compromise has been reached which differs from the manners of the
world and is nevertheless a peculiarly unpleasant form of worldliness.
When he was introduced to anyone he would bow with a sceptical smile,
and at the same time with an exaggerated show of respect, and, if it
was to a man, would say: "Pleased to meet you, sir," in a voice which
ridiculed the words that it was uttering, though with a consciousness
of belonging to some one who was no fool. Having sacrificed this first
moment to a custom which he at once followed and derided (just as on
the first of January he would greet you with a 'Many happy!') he would
adopt an air of infinite cunning, and would 'proffer subtle words'
which were often true enough but 'got on' Albertine's nerves. When I
told her on this first day that his name was Bloch, she exclaimed: "I
would have betted anything he was a Jew–boy. Trust them to put their
foot in it!" Moreover, Bloch was destined to give Albertine other
grounds for annoyance later on. Like many intellectuals, he was
incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way. He would find some
precious qualification for every statement, and would sweep from
particular to general. It vexed Albertine, who was never too well
pleased at other people's shewing an interest in what she was doing,
that when she had sprained her ankle and was keeping quiet, Bloch said
of her: "She is outstretched on her chair, but in her ubiquity has not
ceased to frequent simultaneously vague golf–courses and dubious
tennis–courts." He was simply being 'literary,' of course, but this,
in view of the difficulties which Albertine felt that it might create
for her with friends whose invitations she had declined on the plea
that she was unable to move, was quite enough to disgust her with the
face, the sound of the voice, of the young man who could say such
things about her. We parted, Albertine and I, after promising to take
a walk together later. I had talked to her without being any more
conscious of where my words were falling, of what became of them, than
if I were dropping pebbles into a bottomless pit. That our words are,
as a general rule, filled, by the person to whom we address them, with
a meaning which that person derives from her own substance, a meaning
widely different from that which we had put into the same words when
we uttered them, is a fact which the daily round of life is
perpetually demonstrating. But if we find ourselves as well in the
company of a person whose education (as Albertine's was to me) is
inconceivable, her tastes, her reading, her principles unknown, we
cannot tell whether our words have aroused in her anything that
resembles their meaning, any more than in an animal, although there
are things that even an animal may be made to understand. So that to
attempt any closer friendship with Albertine seemed to me like placing
myself in contact with the unknown, if not the impossible, an
occupation as arduous as breaking a horse, as reposeful as keeping
bees or growing roses.

I had thought, a few hours before, that Albertine would acknowledge my
bow but would not speak to me. We had now parted, after planning to
make some excursion soon together. I vowed that when I next met
Albertine I would treat her with greater boldness, and I had sketched
out in advance a draft of all that I would say to her, and even (being
now quite convinced that she was not strait–laced) of all the favours
that I would demand of her. But the mind is subject to external
influences, as plants are, and cells and chemical elements, and the
medium in which its immersion alters it is a change of circumstances,
or new surroundings. Grown different by the mere fact of her presence,
when I found myself once again in Albertine's company, what I said to
her was not at all what I had meant to say. Remembering her flushed
temple, I asked myself whether she might not appreciate more keenly a
polite attention which she knew to be disinterested. Besides, I was
embarrassed by certain things in her look, in her smile. They might
equally well signify a laxity of morals and the rather silly merriment
of a girl who though full of spirits was at heart thoroughly
respectable. A single expression, on a face as in speech, is
susceptible of divers interpretations, and I stood hesitating like a
schoolboy faced by the difficulties of a piece of Greek prose.

On this occasion we met almost immediately the tall one, Andrée, the
one who had jumped over the old banker, and Albertine was obliged to
introduce me. Her friend had a pair of eyes of extraordinary
brightness, like, in a dark house, a glimpse through an open door of a
room into which the sun is shining with a greenish reflexion from the
glittering sea.

A party of five were passing, men whom I had come to know very well by
sight during my stay at Balbec. I had often wondered who they could
be. "They're nothing very wonderful," said Albertine with a sneering
laugh. "The little old one with dyed hair and yellow gloves has a
fine touch; he knows how to draw all right, he's the Balbec dentist;
he's a good sort. The fat one is the Mayor, not the tiny little fat
one, you must have seen him before, he's the dancing master; he's
rather a beast, you know; he can't stand us, because we make such a
row at the Casino; we smash his chairs, and want to have the carpet up
when we dance; that's why he never gives us prizes, though we're the
only girls there who can dance a bit. The dentist is a dear, I would
have said how d'ye do to him, just to make the dancing master swear,
but I couldn't because they've got M. de Sainte–Croix with them; he's
on the General Council; he comes of a very good family, but he's
joined the Republicans, to make more money. No nice people ever speak
to him now. He knows my uncle, because they're both in the Government,
but the rest of my family always cut him. The thin one in the
waterproof is the bandmaster. You know him, of course. You don't? Oh,
he plays divinely. You haven't been to
Cavalleria Rusticana
? I
thought it too lovely! He's giving a concert this evening, but we
can't go because it's to be in the town hall. In the Casino it
wouldn't matter, but in the town hall, where they've taken down the
crucifix. Andrée's mother would have a fit if we went there. You're
going to say that my aunt's husband is in the Government. But what
difference does that make? My aunt is my aunt. That's not why I'm fond
of her. The only thing she has ever wanted has been to get rid of me.
No, the person who has really been a mother to me, and all the more
credit to her because she's no relation at all, is a friend of mine
whom I love just as much as if she was my mother. I will let you see
her 'photo.'" We were joined for a moment by the golf champion and
baccarat plunger, Octave. I thought that I had discovered a bond
between us, for I learned in the course of conversation that he was
some sort of relative, and even more a friend of the Verdurins. But he
spoke contemptuously of the famous Wednesdays, adding that M. Verdurin
had never even heard of a dinner–jacket, which made it a horrid bore
when one ran into him in a music–hall, where one would very much
rather not be greeted with "Well, you young rascal," by an old fellow
in a frock coat and black tie, for all the world like a village
lawyer. Octave left us, and soon it was Andrée's turn, when we came to
her villa, into which she vanished without having uttered a single
word to me during the whole of our walk. I regretted her departure,
all the more in that, while I was complaining to Albertine how
chilling her friend had been with me, and was comparing in my mind
this difficulty which Albertine seemed to find in making me know her
friends with the hostility that Elstir, when he might have granted my
desire, seemed to have encountered on that first afternoon, two girls
came by to whom I lifted my hat, the young Ambresacs, whom Albertine
greeted also.