In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (3 page)

seeking out every intonation that could be put into it, so as to be
able better to measure my surprise at the way which Berma would have
found of uttering the lines. Concealed, like the Holy of Holies,
beneath the veil that screened her from my gaze, behind which I
invested her, every moment, with a fresh aspect, according to which of
the words of Bergotte—in the pamphlet that Gilberte had found for
me—was passing through my mind; "plastic nobility," "Christian
austerity" or "Jansenist pallor," "Princess of Troezen and of Cleves"
or "Mycenean drama," "Delphic symbol," "Solar myth"; that divine
Beauty, whom Berma's acting was to reveal to me, night and day, upon
an altar perpetually illumined, sat enthroned in the sanctuary of my
mind, my mind for which not itself but my stern, my fickle parents
were to decide whether or not it was to enshrine, and for all time,
the perfections of the Deity unveiled, in the same spot where was now
her invisible form. And with my eyes fixed upon that inconceivable
image, I strove from morning to night to overcome the barriers which
my family were putting in my way. But when those had at last fallen,
when my mother—albeit this matinée was actually to coincide with the
meeting of the Commission from which my father had promised to bring
M. de Norpois home to dinner—had said to me, "Very well, we don't
wish you to be unhappy;—if you think that you will enjoy it so very
much, you must go; that's all;" when this day of theatre–going,
hitherto forbidden and unattainable, depended now only upon myself,
then for the first time, being no longer troubled by the wish that it
might cease to be impossible, I asked myself if it were desirable, if
there were not other reasons than my parents' prohibition which should
make me abandon my design. In the first place, whereas I had been
detesting them for their cruelty, their consent made them now so dear
to me that the thought of causing them pain stabbed me also with a
pain through which the purpose of life shewed itself as the pursuit
not of truth but of loving–kindness, and life itself seemed good or
evil only as my parents were happy or sad. "I would rather not go, if
it hurts you," I told my mother, who, on the contrary, strove hard to
expel from my mind any lurking fear that she might regret my going,
since that, she said, would spoil the pleasure that I should otherwise
derive from
Phèdre
, and it was the thought of my pleasure that had
induced my father and her to reverse their earlier decision. But then
this sort of obligation to find a pleasure in the performance seemed
to me very burdensome. Besides, if I returned home ill, should I be
well again in time to be able to go to the Champs–Elysées as soon as
the holidays were over and Gilberte returned? Against all these
arguments I set, so as to decide which course I should take, the idea,
invisible there behind its veil, of the perfections of Berma. I cast
into one pan of the scales "Making Mamma unhappy," "risking not being
able to go on the Champs–Elysées," and the other, "Jansenist pallor,"
"Solar myth," until the words themselves grew dark and clouded in my
mind's vision, ceased to say anything to me, lost all their force; and
gradually my hesitations became so painful that if I had now decided
upon the theatre it would have been only that I might bring them to an
end, and be delivered from them once and for all. It would have been
to fix a term to my sufferings, and no longer in the expectation of an
intellectual benediction, yielding to the attractions of perfection,
that I would let myself be taken, not now to the Wise Goddess, but to
the stern, implacable Divinity, featureless and unnamed, who had been
secretly substituted for her behind the veil. But suddenly everything
was altered. My desire to go and hear Berma received a fresh stimulus
which enabled me to await the coming of the matinée with impatience
and with joy; having gone to take up, in front of the column on which
the playbills were, my daily station, as excruciating, of late, as
that of a stylite saint, I had seen there, still moist and wrinkled,
the complete bill of
Phèdre
, which had just been pasted up for the
first time (and on which, I must confess, the rest of the cast
furnished no additional attraction which could help me to decide).
But it gave to one of the points between which my indecision wavered a
form at once more concrete and—inasmuch as the bill was dated not
from the day on which I read it but from that on which the performance
would take place, and from the very hour at which the curtain would
rise—almost imminent, well on the way, already, to its realisation,
so that I jumped for joy before the column at the thought that on that
day, and at that hour precisely, I should be sitting there in my
place, ready to hear the voice of Berma; and for fear lest my parents
might not now be in time to secure two good seats for my grandmother
and myself, I raced back to the house, whipped on by the magic words
which had now taken the place, in my mind, of "Jansenist pallor" and
"Solar myth";—"Ladies will not be admitted to the stalls in hats. The
doors will be closed at two o'clock."

Alas! that first
matinée
was to prove a bitter disappointment. My
father offered to drop my grandmother and me at the theatre, on his
way to the Commission. Before leaving the house he said to my mother:
"See that you have a good dinner for us to–night; you remember, I'm
bringing de Norpois back with me." My mother had not forgotten. And
all that day, and overnight, Françoise, rejoicing in the opportunity
to devote herself to that art of the kitchen,—of which she was indeed
a past–master, stimulated, moreover, by the prospect of having a new
guest to feed, the consciousness that she would have to compose, by
methods known to her alone, a dish of beef in jelly,—had been living
in the effervescence of creation; since she attached the utmost
importance to the intrinsic quality of the materials which were to
enter into the fabric of her work, she had gone herself to the Halles
to procure the best cuts of rump–steak, shin of beef, calves'–feet, as
Michelangelo passed eight months in the mountains of Carrara choosing
the most perfect blocks of marble for the monument of Julius
II—Françoise expended on these comings and goings so much ardour that
Mamma, at the sight of her flaming cheeks, was alarmed lest our old
servant should make herself ill with overwork, like the sculptor of
the Tombs of the Medici in the quarries of Pietrasanta. And overnight
Françoise had sent to be cooked in the baker's oven, shielded with
breadcrumbs, like a block of pink marble packed in sawdust, what she
called a "Nev'–York ham." Believing the language to be less rich than
it actually was in words, and her own ears less trustworthy, the first
time that she heard anyone mention York ham she had thought, no
doubt,—feeling it to be hardly conceivable that the dictionary could
be so prodigal as to include at once a "York" and a "New York"—that
she had misheard what was said, and that the ham was really called by
the name already familiar to her. And so, ever since, the word York
was preceded in her ears, or before her eyes when she read it in an
advertisement, by the affix "New" which she pronounced "Nev'". And it
was with the most perfect faith that she would say to her
kitchen–maid: "Go and fetch me a ham from Olida's. Madame told me
especially to get a Nev'–York." On that particular day, if Françoise
was consumed by the burning certainty of creative genius, my lot was
the cruel anxiety of the seeker after truth. No doubt, so long as I
had not yet heard Berma speak, I still felt some pleasure. I felt it
in the little square that lay in front of the theatre, in which, in
two hours' time, the bare boughs of the chestnut trees would gleam
with a metallic lustre as the lighted gas–lamps shewed up every detail
of their structure; before the attendants in the box–office, the
selection of whom, their promotion, all their destiny depended upon
the great artist—for she alone held power in the theatre, where
ephemeral managers followed one after the other in an obscure
succession—who took our tickets without even glancing at us, so
preoccupied were they with their anxiety lest any of Mme. Berma's
instructions had not been duly transmitted to the new members of the
staff, lest it was not clearly, everywhere, understood that the hired
applause must never sound for her, that the windows must all be kept
open so long as she was not on the stage, and every door closed tight,
the moment that she appeared; that a bowl of hot water must be
concealed somewhere close to her, to make the dust settle: and, for
that matter, at any moment now her carriage, drawn by a pair of horses
with flowing manes, would be stopping outside the theatre, she would
alight from it muffled in furs, and, crossly acknowledging everyone's
salute, would send one of her attendants to find out whether a stage
box had been kept for her friends, what the temperature was 'in
front,' who were in the other boxes, if the programme sellers were
looking smart; theatre and public being to her no more than a second,
an outermost cloak which she would put on, and the medium, the more or
less 'good' conductor through which her talent would have to pass. I
was happy, too, in the theatre itself; since I had made the discovery
that—in contradiction of the picture so long entertained by my
childish imagination—there was but one stage for everybody, I had
supposed that I should be prevented from seeing it properly by the
presence of the other spectators, as one is when in the thick of a
crowd; now I registered the fact that, on the contrary, thanks to an
arrangement which is, so to speak, symbolical of all spectatorship,
everyone feels himself to be the centre of the theatre; which
explained to me why, when Françoise had been sent once to see some
melodrama from the top gallery, she had assured us on her return that
her seat had been the best in the house, and that instead of finding
herself too far from the stage she had been positively frightened by
the mysterious and living proximity of the curtain. My pleasure
increased further when I began to distinguish behind the said lowered
curtain such confused rappings as one hears through the shell of an
egg before the chicken emerges, sounds which speedily grew louder and
suddenly, from that world which, impenetrable by our eyes, yet
scrutinised us with its own, addressed themselves, and to us
indubitably, in the imperious form of three consecutive hammer–blows
as moving as any signals from the planet Mars. And—once this curtain
had risen,—when on the stage a writing–table and a fireplace, in no
way out of the ordinary, had indicated that the persons who were about
to enter would be, not actors come to recite, as I had seen them once
and heard them at an evening party, but real people, just living their
lives at home, on whom I was thus able to spy without their seeing
me—my pleasure still endured; it was broken by a momentary
uneasiness; just as I was straining my ears in readiness before the
piece began, two men entered the theatre from the side of the stage,
who must have been very angry with each other, for they were talking
so loud that in the auditorium, where there were at least a thousand
people, we could hear every word, whereas in quite a small
café
one
is obliged to call the waiter and ask what it is that two men, who
appear to be quarrelling, are saying; but at that moment, while I sat
astonished to find that the audience was listening to them without
protest, drowned as it was in a universal silence upon which broke,
presently, a laugh here and there, I understood that these insolent
fellows were the actors and that the short piece known as the
'curtain–raiser' had now begun. It was followed by an interval so long
that the audience, who had returned to their places, grew impatient
and began to stamp their feet. I was terrified at this; for just as in
the report of a criminal trial, when I read that some noble–minded
person was coming, against his own interests, to testify on behalf of
an innocent prisoner, I was always afraid that they would not be nice
enough to him, would not shew enough gratitude, would not recompense
him lavishly, and that he, in disgust, would then range himself on the
side of injustice; so now attributing to genius, in this respect, the
same qualities as to virtue, I was afraid lest Berma, annoyed by the
bad behaviour of so ill–bred an audience—in which, on the other hand,
I should have liked her to recognise, with satisfaction, a few
celebrities to whose judgment she would be bound to attach
importance—should express her discontent and disdain by acting badly.
And I gazed appealingly round me at these stamping brutes who were
about to shatter, in their insensate rage, the rare and fragile
impression which I had come to seek. The last moments of my pleasure
were during the opening scenes of
Phèdre
. The heroine herself does not
appear in these first scenes of the second act; and yet, as soon as
the curtain rose, and another curtain, of red velvet this time, was
parted in the middle (a curtain which was used to halve the depth of
the stage in all the plays in which the 'star' appeared), an actress
entered from the back who had the face and voice which, I had been
told, were those of Berma. The cast must therefore have been changed;
all the trouble that I had taken in studying the part of the wife of
Theseus was wasted. But a second actress now responded to the first. I
must, then, have been mistaken in supposing that the first was Berma,
for the second even more closely resembled her, and, more than the
other, had her diction. Both of them, moreover, enriched their parts
with noble gestures—which I could vividly distinguish, and could
appreciate in their relation to the text, while they raised and let
fall the lovely folds of their tunics—and also with skilful changes
of tone, now passionate, now ironical, which made me realise the
significance of lines that I had read to myself at home without paying
sufficient attention to what they really meant. But all of a sudden,
in the cleft of the red curtain that veiled her sanctuary, as in a
frame, appeared a woman, and simultaneously with the fear that seized
me, far more vexing than Berma's fear could be, lest someone should
upset her by opening a window, or drown one of her lines by rustling a
programme, or annoy her by applauding the others and by not applauding
her enough;—in my own fashion, still more absolute than Berma's, of
considering from that moment theatre, audience, play and my own body
only as an acoustic medium of no importance, save in the degree to
which it was favourable to the inflexions of that voice,—I realised
that the two actresses whom I had been for some minutes admiring bore
not the least resemblance to her whom I had come to hear. But at the
same time all my pleasure had ceased; in vain might I strain towards
Berma's eyes, ears, mind, so as not to let one morsel escape me of the
reasons which she would furnish for my admiring her, I did not succeed
in gathering a single one. I could not even, as I could with her
companions, distinguish in her diction and in her playing intelligent
intonations, beautiful gestures. I listened to her as though I were
reading
Phèdre
, or as though Phaedra herself had at that moment
uttered the words that I was hearing, without its appearing that
Berma's talent had added anything at all to them. I could have wished,
so as to be able to explore them fully, so as to attempt to discover
what it was in them that was beautiful, to arrest, to immobilise for a
time before my senses every intonation of the artist's voice, every
expression of her features; at least I did attempt, by dint of my
mental agility in having, before a line came, my attention ready and
tuned to catch it, not to waste upon preparations any morsel of the
precious time that each word, each gesture occupied, and, thanks to
the intensity of my observation, to manage to penetrate as far into
them as if I had had whole hours to spend upon them, by myself. But
how short their duration was! Scarcely had a sound been received by my
ear than it was displaced there by another. In one scene, where Berma
stands motionless for a moment, her arm raised to the level of a face
bathed, by some piece of stagecraft, in a greenish light, before a
back–cloth painted to represent the sea, the whole house broke out in
applause; but already the actress had moved, and the picture that I
should have liked to study existed no longer. I told my grandmother
that I could not see very well; she handed me her glasses. Only, when
one believes in the reality of a thing, making it visible by
artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that it is close at
hand. I thought now that it was no longer Berma at whom I was looking,
but her image in a magnifying glass. I put the glasses down, but then
possibly the image that my eye received of her, diminished by
distance, was no more exact; which of the two Bermas was the real? As
for her speech to Hippolyte, I had counted enormously upon that,
since, to judge by the ingenious significance which her companions
were disclosing to me at every moment in less beautiful parts, she
would certainly render it with intonations more surprising than any
which, when reading the play at home, I had contrived to imagine; but
she did not attain to the heights which Œnone or Aricie would
naturally have reached, she planed down into a uniform flow of melody
the whole of a passage in which there were mingled together
contradictions so striking that the least intelligent of tragic
actresses, even the pupils of an academy, could not have missed their
effect; besides which, she ran through the speech so rapidly that it
was only when she had come to the last line that my mind became aware
of the deliberate monotony which she had imposed on it throughout.