In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (16 page)

When he had been paying calls Swann would often come home with little
time to spare before dinner. At that point in the evening, six
o'clock, when in the old days he had felt so wretched, he no longer
asked himself what Odette might be about, and was hardly at all
concerned to hear that she had people still with her, or had gone out.
He recalled at times that he had once, years ago, tried to read
through its envelope a letter addressed by Odette to Forcheville. But
this memory was not pleasing to him, and rather than plumb the depth
of shame that he felt in it he preferred to indulge in a little
grimace, twisting up the corners of his mouth and adding, if need be,
a shake of the head which signified "What does it all matter?" In
truth, he considered now that the hypothesis by which he had often
been brought to a standstill in days gone by, according to which it
was his jealous imagination alone that blackened what was in reality
the innocent life of Odette—that this hypothesis (which after all was
beneficent, since, so long as his amorous malady had lasted, it had
diminished his sufferings by making them seem imaginary) was not the
truth, that it was his jealousy that had seen things in the right
light, and that if Odette had loved him better than he supposed, she
had deceived him more as well. Formerly, while his sufferings were
still keen, he had vowed that, as soon as he should have ceased to
love Odette, and so to be afraid either of vexing her or of making her
believe that he loved her more than he did, he would afford himself
the satisfaction of elucidating with her, simply from his love of
truth and as a historical point, whether or not she had had
Forcheville in her room that day when he had rung her bell and rapped
on her window without being let in, and she had written to Forcheville
that it was an uncle of hers who had called. But this so interesting
problem, of which he was waiting to attempt the solution only until
his jealousy should have subsided, had precisely lost all interest in
Swann's eyes when he had ceased to be jealous. Not immediately,
however. He felt no other jealousy now with regard to Odette than what
the memory of that day, that afternoon spent in knocking vainly at the
little house in the Rue La Pérouse, had continued to excite in him; as
though his jealousy, not dissimilar in that respect from those
maladies which appear to have their seat, their centre of contagion
less in certain persons than in certain places, in certain houses, had
had for its object not so much Odette herself as that day, that hour
in the irrevocable past when Swann had beaten at every entrance to her
house in turn. You would have said that that day, that hour alone had
caught and preserved a few last fragments of the amorous personality
which had once been Swann's, and that there alone could he now
recapture them. For a long time now it had made no matter to him that
Odette had been false to him, and was false still. And yet he had
continued for some years to seek out old servants of Odette, so
strongly in him persisted the painful curiosity to know whether on
that day, so long ago, at six o'clock, Odette had been in bed with
Forcheville. Then that curiosity itself had disappeared, without,
however, his abandoning his investigations. He continued the attempt
to discover what no longer interested him, because his old ego though
it had shrivelled to the extreme of decrepitude still acted
mechanically, following the course of preoccupations so utterly
abandoned that Swann could not now succeed even in forming an idea of
that anguish—so compelling once that he had been unable to foresee
his ever being delivered from it, that only the death of her whom he
loved (death which, as will be shewn later on in this story, by a
cruel example, in no way diminishes the sufferings caused by jealousy)
seemed to him capable of making smooth the road, then insurmountably
barred to him, of his life.

But to bring to light, some day, those passages in the life of Odette
to which he owed his sufferings had not been Swann's only ambition; he
had in reserve that also of wreaking vengeance for his sufferings
when, being no longer in love with Odette, he should no longer be
afraid of her; and the opportunity of gratifying this second ambition
had just occurred, for Swann was in love with another woman, a woman
who gave him—grounds for jealousy, no, but who did all the same make
him jealous, because he was not capable, now, of altering his way of
making love, and it was the way he had used with Odette that must
serve him now for another. To make Swann's jealousy revive it was not
essential that this woman should be unfaithful, it sufficed that for
any reason she was separated from him, at a party for instance, where
she was presumably enjoying herself. That was enough to reawaken in
him the old anguish, that lamentable and inconsistent excrescence of
his love, which held Swann ever at a distance from what she really
was, like a yearning to attain the impossible (what this young woman
really felt for him, the hidden longing that absorbed her days, the
secret places of her heart), for between Swann and her whom he loved
this anguish piled up an unyielding mass of already existing
suspicions, having their cause in Odette, or in some other perhaps who
had preceded Odette, allowing this now ageing lover to know his
mistress of the moment only in the traditional and collective phantasm
of the 'woman who made him jealous,' in which he had arbitrarily
incarnated his new love. Often, however, Swann would charge his
jealousy with the offence of making him believe in imaginary
infidelities; but then he would remember that he had given Odette the
benefit of the same argument and had in that been wrong. And so
everything that the young woman whom he loved did in those hours when
he was not with her appeared spoiled of its innocence in his eyes. But
whereas at that other time he had made a vow that if ever he ceased to
love her whom he did not then imagine to be his future wife, he would
implacably exhibit to her an indifference that would at length be
sincere, so as to avenge his pride that had so long been trampled upon
by her—of those reprisals which he might now enforce without risk to
himself (for what harm could it do him to be taken at his word and
deprived of those intimate moments with Odette that had been so
necessary to him once), of those reprisals he took no more thought;
with his love had vanished the desire to shew that he was in love no
longer. And he who, when he was suffering at the hands of Odette,
would have looked forward so keenly to letting her see one day that he
had fallen to a rival, now that he was in a position to do so took
infinite precautions lest his wife should suspect the existence of
this new love.

* * *

It was not only in those tea–parties, on account of which I had
formerly had the sorrow of seeing Gilberte leave me and go home
earlier than usual, that I was henceforth to take part, but the
engagements that she had with her mother, to go for a walk or to some
afternoon party, which by preventing her from coming to the
Champs–Elysées had deprived me of her, on those days when I loitered
alone upon the lawn or stood before the wooden horses,—to these
outings M. and Mme. Swann henceforth admitted me, I had a seat in
their landau, and indeed it was me that they asked if I would rather
go to the theatre, to a dancing lesson at the house of one of
Gilberte's friends, to some social gathering given by friends of her
parents (what Odette called 'a little meeting') or to visit the tombs
at Saint–Denis.

On days when I was going anywhere with the Swanns I would arrive at
the house in time for
déjeuner
, which Mme. Swann called 'le lunch';
as one was not expected before half–past twelve, while my parents in
those days had their meal at a quarter past eleven, it was not until
they had risen from the table that I made my way towards that
sumptuous quarter, deserted enough at any hour, but more particularly
just then, when everyone had gone indoors. Even on winter days of
frost, if the weather held, tightening every few minutes the knot of a
gorgeous necktie from Charvet's and looking to see that my varnished
boots were not getting dirty, I would roam to and fro among the
avenues, waiting until twenty–seven minutes past the hour. I could see
from afar in the Swanns' little garden–plot the sunlight glittering
like hoar frost from the bare–boughed trees. It is true that the
garden boasted but a pair of them. The unusual hour presented the
scene in a new light. Into these pleasures of nature (intensified by
the suppression of habit and indeed by my physical hunger) the
thrilling prospect of sitting down to luncheon with Mme. Swann was
infused; it did not diminish them, but taking command of them trained
them to its service; so that if, at this hour when ordinarily I did
not perceive them, I seemed now to be discovering the fine weather,
the cold, the wintry sunlight, it was all as a sort of preface to the
creamed eggs, as a patina, a cool and coloured glaze applied to the
decoration of that mystic chapel which was the habitation of Mme.
Swann, and in the heart of which there were, by contrast, so much
warmth, so many scents and flowers.

At half–past twelve I would finally make up my mind to enter that
house which, like an immense Christmas stocking, seemed ready to
bestow upon me supernatural delights. (The French name 'Noël' was, by
the way, unknown to Mme. Swann and Gilberte, who had substituted for
it the English 'Christmas,' and would speak of nothing but 'Christmas
pudding,' what people had given them as 'Christmas presents' and of
going away—the thought of which maddened me with grief—'for
Christmas.' At home even, I should have thought it degrading to use
the word 'Noël,' and always said 'Christmas,' which my father
considered extremely silly.)

I encountered no one at first but a footman who after leading me
through several large drawing–rooms shewed me into one that was quite
small, empty, its windows beginning to dream already in the blue light
of afternoon; I was left alone there in the company of orchids, roses
and violets, which, like people who are kept waiting in a room beside
you but do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality
as living things made all the more impressive, and received coldly the
warmth of a glowing fire of coals, preciously displayed behind a
screen of crystal, in a basin of white marble over which it spilled,
now and again, its perilous rubies.

I had sat down, but I rose hurriedly on hearing the door opened; it
was only another footman, and then a third, and the minute result chat
their vainly alarming entrances and exits achieved was to put a little
more coal on the fire or water in the vases. They departed, I found
myself alone, once that door was shut which Mme. Swann was surely soon
going to open. Of a truth, I should have been less ill at ease in a
magician's cave than in this little waiting–room where the fire
appeared to me to be performing alchemical transmutations as in
Klingsor's laboratory. Footsteps sounded afresh, I did not rise, it
was sure to be just another footman; it was M. Swann. "What! All by
yourself? What is one to do; that poor wife of mine has never been
able to remember what time means! Ten minutes to one. She gets later
every day. And you'll see, she will come sailing in without the least
hurry, and imagine she's in heaps of time." And as he was still
subject to neuritis, and as he was becoming a trifle ridiculous, the
fact of possessing so unpunctual a wife, who came in so late from the
Bois, forgot everything at her dressmaker's and was never in time for
luncheon made Swann anxious for his digestion but flattered his
self–esteem.

He shewed me his latest acquisitions and explained their interest to
me, but my emotion, added to the unfamiliarity of being still without
food at this hour, sweeping through my mind left it void, so that
while able to speak I was incapable of hearing. Anyhow, so far as the
works of art in Swann's possession were concerned, it was enough for
me that they were contained in his house, formed a part there of the
delicious hour that preceded luncheon. The Gioconda herself might have
appeared there without giving me any more pleasure than one of Mme.
Swann's indoor gowns, or her scent bottles.

I continued to wait, alone or with Swann, and often with Gilberte,
come in to keep us company. The arrival of Mme. Swann, prepared for me
by all those majestic apparitions, must (so it seemed to me) be
something truly immense. I strained my ears to catch the slightest
sound. But one never finds quite as high as one has been expecting a
cathedral, a wave in a storm, a dancer's leap in the air; after those
liveried footmen, suggesting the chorus whose processional entry upon
the stage leads up to and at the same time diminishes the final
appearance of the queen, Mme. Swann, creeping furtively in, with a
little otter–skin coat, her veil lowered to cover a nose pink–tipped
by the cold, did not fulfil the promises lavished, while I had been
waiting, upon my imagination.

But if she had stayed at home all morning, when she arrived in the
drawing–room she would be clad in a wrapper of
crêpe–de–Chine
,
brightly coloured, which seemed to me more exquisite than any of her
dresses.

Sometimes the Swanns decided to remain in the house all afternoon, and
then, as we had had luncheon so late, very soon I must watch setting,
beyond the garden–wall, the sun of that day which had seemed to me
bound to be different from other days; then in vain might the servants
bring in lamps of every size and shape, burning each upon the
consecrated altar of a console, a card–table, a corner–cupboard, a
bracket, as though for the celebration of some strange and secret
rite; nothing extraordinary transpired in the conversation, and I went
home disappointed, as one often is in one's childhood after the
midnight mass.