The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (319 page)

It was not very often, however, that I was fated to meet M. de Charlus and Morel. Often they had already gone into Jupien’s shop when I came away from the Duchess, for the pleasure that I found in her company was such that I was led to forget not merely the anxious expectation that preceded Albertine’s return, but even the hour of that return.

I shall set apart from the other days on which I lingered at Mme de Guermantes’s one that was marked by a trivial incident the cruel significance of which entirely escaped me and was not brought home to me until long afterwards. On this particular evening, Mme de
Guermantes had given me, knowing that I was fond of them, some branches of syringa which had been sent to her from the South. When I left her and went upstairs to our flat, Albertine had already returned, and on the staircase I ran into Andrée, who seemed to be distressed by the powerful smell of the flowers that I was bringing home.

“What, are you back already?” I said.

“Only a moment ago, but Albertine had some letters to write, so she sent me away.”

“You don’t think she’s up to any mischief?”

“Not at all, she’s writing to her aunt, I think. But you know how she dislikes strong scents, she won’t be particularly thrilled by your syringa.”

“How stupid of me! I shall tell Françoise to put them out on the service stairs.”

“Do you imagine Albertine won’t notice the scent of them on you? Next to tuberoses they’ve the strongest scent of any flower, I always think. Anyhow, I believe Françoise has gone out shopping.”

“But in that case, as I haven’t got my latchkey, how am I to get in?”

“Oh, you’ve only got to ring the bell. Albertine will let you in. Besides, Françoise may have come back by this time.”

I said good-bye to Andrée. I had no sooner pressed the bell than Albertine came to open the door, which she had some difficulty in doing since, in the absence of Françoise, she did not know where to turn on the light. At last she managed to let me in, but the scent of the syringa put her to flight. I took them to the kitchen, so that meanwhile my mistress, leaving her letter unfinished (I
had no idea why), had time to go to my room, from which she called to me, and to lie down on my bed. Once again, at the actual moment I saw nothing in all this that was not perfectly natural, at the most a little confused, but in any case unimportant. She had nearly been caught with Andrée, and had snatched a brief respite for herself by turning out all the lights, going to my room so that I should not see the disorder of her bed, and pretending to be writing a letter. But we shall see all this—the truth of which I never ascertained—later on.

In general, apart from this isolated incident, everything would be quite normal when I returned from my visits to the Duchess. Since Albertine never knew whether I might not wish to go out with her before dinner, I usually found in the hall her hat, coat and umbrella, which she had left lying there in case they should be needed. As soon as I caught sight of them on opening the door, the atmosphere of the house became breathable once more. I felt that, instead of a rarefied air, it was happiness that filled it. I was rescued from my melancholy, the sight of these trifles gave me possession of Albertine, and I would rush to greet her.

On the days when I did not go down to Mme de Guermantes, so that time should not hang too heavy for me during the hour that preceded Albertine’s return, I would take up an album of Elstir’s work, one of Bergotte’s books, or Vinteuil’s sonata. Then, just as those works of art which seem to address themselves to the eye or ear alone require that, if we are to appreciate them, our awakened intelligence shall collaborate closely with those organs, I would unconsciously summon up from within me the dreams that Albertine had inspired in me long ago
before I knew her and that had been quenched by the routine of everyday life. I would cast them into the composer’s phrase or the painter’s image as into a crucible, or use them to enrich the book that I was reading. And no doubt the latter appeared all the more vivid in consequence. But Albertine herself gained just as much by being thus transported from one into the other of the two worlds to which we have access and in which we can place alternately the same object, by escaping thus from the crushing weight of matter to play freely in the fluid spaces of the mind. I found myself suddenly and for an instant capable of passionate feelings for this wearisome girl. She had at that moment the appearance of a work by Elstir or Bergotte, I felt a momentary ardour for her, seeing her in the perspective of imagination and art.

Presently I would be told that she had returned; though there was a standing order that her name was not to be mentioned if I was not alone, and if, for instance, I had Bloch in the room with me, I would compel him to stay a little longer so that there should be no risk of his meeting my mistress in the hall. For I concealed the fact that she was staying in the house, and even that I ever saw her there, so afraid was I that one of my friends might become infatuated with her, and wait for her outside, or that in a momentary encounter in the passage or the hall she might make a signal and fix a rendezvous. Then I would hear the rustle of Albertine’s skirt on her way to her own room, for, out of tact and also no doubt in the spirit in which, when we used to go to dinner at La Raspelière, she went out to great lengths to ensure that I should have no cause for jealousy, she did not come to my room when she knew that I was not alone. But it was
not only for this reason, as I suddenly realised. I remembered; I had known a different Albertine then all at once she had changed into another, the Albertine of today. And for this change I could hold no one responsible but myself. Everything that she would have admitted to me readily and willingly when we were simply good friends had ceased to flow from her as soon as she had suspected that I was in love with her, or, without perhaps thinking of the name of Love, had divined the existence in me of an inquisitorial sentiment that desires to know, yet suffers from knowing, and seeks to learn still more. Ever since that day, she had concealed everything from me. She kept away from my room whether she thought my visitor was male or (as was not often the case) female, she whose eyes used at one time to sparkle so brightly whenever I mentioned a girl: “You must try and get her to come here. I’d be amused to meet her.” “But she’s what you call a bad type.” “Precisely, that’ll make it all the more fun.” At that moment, I might perhaps have learned all that there was to know. And even when, in the little Casino, she had withdrawn her breasts from Andrée’s, I believe that this was due not to my presence but to that of Cottard, who was capable, she doubtless thought, of giving her a bad reputation. And yet, even then, she had already begun to “freeze,” confiding words no longer issued from her lips, her gestures became guarded. Then she had rid herself of everything that might have disturbed me. To those parts of her life of which I knew nothing she ascribed a character the inoffensiveness of which my ignorance conspired to accentuate. And now the transformation was completed; she went straight to her room if I was not alone, not merely from fear of disturbing me, but in
order to show me that she was not interested in other people. There was one thing alone that she would never again do for me, that she would have done only in the days when it would have left me indifferent, that she would then have done without hesitation for that very reason, namely, confess. I should be for ever reduced, like a judge, to drawing uncertain conclusions from verbal indiscretions that were perhaps explicable without postulating guilt. And always she would feel that I was jealous, and judging her.

Our engagement was assuming the aspect of a criminal trial, and gave her the timorousness of a guilty party. Now she changed the conversation whenever it turned on people, men or women, who were not of mature years. It was when she had not yet suspected that I was jealous of her that I should have asked her to tell me what I wanted to know. One ought always to take advantage of that period. It is then that one’s mistress tells one about her pleasures and even the means by which she conceals them from other people. She would no longer have admitted to me now as she had admitted at Balbec, partly because it was true, partly by way of apology for not making her affection for me more evident, for I had already begun to weary her even then, and she had gathered from my kindness to her that she need not show as much affection to me as to others in order to obtain more from me than from them—she would no longer have admitted to me now as she had admitted then: “I think it stupid to let people see who one loves. I’m just the opposite: as soon as a person attracts me, I pretend not to take any notice. In that way, nobody knows anything about it.”

What, it was the same Albertine of today, with her
pretensions to frankness and indifference to everyone, who had told me that! She would never have expressed such a rule of conduct to me now! She contented herself, when she was chatting to me, with applying it by saying of some girl or other who might cause me anxiety: “Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t even look at her, she’s too insignificant.” And from time to time, to anticipate discoveries which I might make, she would proffer the sort of confessions whose very tone, before one knows the reality which they are intended to distort, to exculpate, already betrays them as lies.

As I listened to Albertine’s footsteps with the consoling pleasure of thinking that she would not be going out again that evening, I marvelled at the thought that, for this girl whom at one time I had supposed that I could never possibly succeed in knowing, returning home every day actually meant returning to my home. The fugitive and fragmentary pleasure, compounded of mystery and sensuality, which I had felt at Balbec, on the night when she had come to sleep at the hotel, had been completed and stabilised, filling my hitherto empty dwelling with a permanent store of domestic, almost conjugal, ease that radiated even into the passages and upon which all my senses, either actively or, when I was alone, in imagination as I awaited her return, peacefully fed. When I had heard the door of Albertine’s room shut behind her, if I had a friend with me I made haste to get rid of him, not leaving him until I was quite sure that he was on the staircase, down which I might even escort him for a few steps.

Coming towards me in the passage, Albertine would greet me with: “I say, while I’m taking off my things, I
shall send you Andrée. She’s looked in for a minute to say hello.” And still swathed in the big grey veil, falling from her chinchilla toque, which I had given her at Balbec, she would turn from, me and go back to her room, as though she had guessed that Andrée, whom I had entrusted with the duty of watching over her, would presently, by relating their day’s adventures in full detail, mentioning their meeting with some person of their acquaintance, impart a certain clarity of outline to the vague regions in which the day-long excursion had run its course and which I had been incapable of imagining.

Andrée’s defects had become more marked; she was no longer as pleasant a companion as when I first knew her. One noticed now, on the surface, a sort of sour uneasiness, ready to gather like a swell on the sea, merely if I happened to mention something that gave pleasure to Albertine and myself. This did not prevent Andrée from being nicer to me and liking me better—and I had frequent proof of this—than other more amiable people. But the slightest look of happiness on a person’s face, if it was not caused by herself, gave a shock to her nerves, as unpleasant as that given by a banging door. She could accept sufferings in which she had no part, but not pleasures; if she saw that I was unwell, she was distressed, was sorry for me, would have stayed to nurse me. But if I displayed a satisfaction as trifling as that of stretching myself with a blissful expression as I shut a book, saying: “Ah! I’ve just spent two delightful hours reading. What an enjoyable book!,” these words, which would have given pleasure to my mother, to Albertine, to Saint-Loup, provoked in Andrée a sort of disapprobation, perhaps simply a sort of nervous discomfort. My satisfactions caused her an irritation
which she was unable to conceal. These defects were supplemented by others of a more serious nature; one day when I mentioned the young man so learned in matters of racing, gambling and golf, so uneducated in everything else, whom I had met with the little band at Balbec, Andrée said with a sneer: “You know that his father is a swindler, he only just missed being prosecuted. They’re swaggering now more than ever, but I tell everybody about it. I should love them to bring an action for slander against me. I’d have something to say in the witness-box!” Her eyes sparkled. In fact I discovered that the father had done nothing wrong, and that Andrée knew this as well as anybody. But she had felt spurned by the son, had looked around for something that would embarrass him, put him to shame, and had concocted a whole string of evidence which she imagined herself called upon to give in court, and, by dint of repeating the details to herself, was perhaps herself unsure whether they were true or not. And so, in her present state (and even without her brief, mad hatreds), I should not have wished to see her, if only because of the malevolent touchiness that surrounded with a sour and frigid carapace her warmer and better nature. But the information which she alone could give me about my mistress interested me too much for me to be able to neglect so rare an opportunity of acquiring it.

Andrée would come into my room, shutting the door behind her. They had met a girl they knew, whom Albertine had never mentioned to me.

“What did they talk about?”

“I can’t tell you; I took advantage of the fact that Albertine wasn’t alone to go and buy some wool.”

“Buy some wool?”

“Yes, it was Albertine who asked me to get it.”

“All the more reason not to have gone. It was perhaps a pretext to get you out of the way.”

“But she asked me to go for it before we met her friend.”

“Ah!” I would reply, breathing again. At once my suspicions were revived: she might, for all I knew, have made an appointment beforehand with her friend and have provided herself with an excuse to be left alone when the time came. Besides, could I be certain that it was not my former hypothesis (according to which Andrée did not always tell me the truth) that was correct? Andrée was perhaps in league with Albertine.