In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (11 page)

Well, perhaps it was simply that Swann knew that generosity is often
no more than the inner aspect which our egotistical feelings assume
when we have not yet named and classified them. Perhaps he had
recognised in the sympathy that I expressed for him simply an
effect—and the strongest possible proof—of my love for Gilberte, by
which, and not by any subordinate veneration of himself, my subsequent
actions would be irresistibly controlled. I was unable to share his
point of view, since I had not succeeded in abstracting my love from
myself, in forcing it back into the common experience of humanity, and
thus suffering, experimentally, its consequences; I was in despair. I
was obliged to leave Gilberte for a moment; Françoise had called me. I
must accompany her into a little pavilion covered in a green trellis,
not unlike one of the disused toll–houses of old Paris, in which had
recently been installed what in England they call a lavatory but in
France, by an ill–informed piece of anglomania, "water–closets." The
old, damp walls at the entrance, where I stood waiting for Françoise,
emitted a chill and fusty smell which, relieving me at once of the
anxieties that Swann's words, as reported by Gilberte, had just
awakened in me, pervaded me with a pleasure not at all of the same
character as other pleasures, which leave one more unstable than
before, incapable of retaining them, of possessing them, but, on the
contrary, with a consistent pleasure on which I could lean for
support, delicious, soothing, rich with a truth that was lasting,
unexplained and certain. I should have liked, as long ago in my walks
along the Guermantes way, to endeavour to penetrate the charm of this
impression which had seized hold of me, and, remaining there
motionless, to interrogate this antiquated emanation which invited me
not to enjoy the pleasure which it was offering me only as an 'extra,'
but to descend into the underlying reality which it had not yet
disclosed to me. But the tenant of the establishment, an elderly dame
with painted cheeks and an auburn wig, was speaking to me. Françoise
thought her 'very well–to–do indeed.' Her "missy" had married what
Françoise called 'a young man of family,' which meant that he differed
more, in her eyes, from a workman than, in Saint–Simon's, a duke did
from a man 'risen from the dregs of the people.' No doubt the tenant,
before entering upon her tenancy, had met with reverses. But Françoise
was positive that she was a 'marquise,' and belonged to the
Saint–Ferréol family. This 'marquise' warned me not to stand outside
in the cold, and even opened one of her doors for me, saying: "Won't
you go inside for a minute? Look, here's a nice, clean one, and I
shan't charge you anything." Perhaps she just made this offer in the
spirit in which the young ladies at Gouache's, when we went in there
to order something, used to offer me one of the sweets which they kept
on the counter under glass bells, and which, alas, Mamma would never
allow me to take; perhaps with less innocence, like an old florist
whom Mamma used to have in to replenish her flower–stands, who rolled
languishing eyes at me as she handed me a rose. In any event, if
the 'marquise' had a weakness for little boys, when she threw open to
them the hypogean doors of those cubicles of stone in which men crouch
like sphinxes, she must have been moved to that generosity less by the
hope of corrupting them than by the pleasure which all of us feel in
displaying a needless prodigality to those whom we love, for I have
never seen her with any other visitor except an old park–keeper.

A moment later I said good–bye to the 'marquise,' and went out
accompanied by Françoise, whom I left to return to Gilberte. I caught
sight of her at once, on a chair, behind the clump of laurels. She was
there so as not to be seen by her friends: they were playing at
hide–and–seek. I went and sat down by her side. She had on a flat cap
which drooped forwards over her eyes, giving her the same 'underhand,'
brooding, crafty look which I had remarked in her that first time at
Comb ray. I asked her if there was not some way for me to have it out
with her father, face to face. Gilberte said that she had suggested
that to him, but that he had not thought it of any use. "Look," she
went on, "don't go away without your letter; I must run along to the
others, as they haven't caught me."

Had Swann appeared on the scene then before I had recovered it, this
letter, by the sincerity of which I felt that he had been so
unreasonable in not letting himself be convinced, perhaps he would
have seen that it was he who had been in the right. For as I
approached Gilberte, who, leaning back in her chair, told me to take
the letter but did not hold it out to me, I felt myself so
irresistibly attracted by her body that I said to her: "Look! You try
to stop me from getting it; we'll see which is the stronger."

She thrust it behind her back; I put my arms round her neck, raising
the plaits of hair which she wore over her shoulders, either because
she was still of an age for that or because her mother chose to make
her look a child for a little longer so that she herself might still
seem young; and we wrestled, locked together. I tried to pull her
towards me, she resisted; her cheeks, inflamed by the effort, were as
red and round as two cherries; she laughed as though I were tickling
her; I held her gripped between my legs like a young tree which I was
trying to climb; and, in the middle of my gymnastics, when I was
already out of breath with the muscular exercise and the heat of the
game, I felt, as it were a few drops of sweat wrung from me by the
effort, my pleasure express itself in a form which I could not even
pause for a moment to analyse; immediately I snatched the letter from
her. Whereupon Gilberte said, good–naturedly:

"You know, if you like, we might go on wrestling for a little."

Perhaps she was dimly conscious that my game had had another object
than that which I had avowed, but too dimly to have been able to see
that I had attained it. And I, who was afraid that she had seen (and a
slight recoil, as though of offended modesty which she made and
checked a moment later made me think that my fear had not been
unfounded), agreed to go on wrestling, lest she should suppose that I
had indeed no other object than that, after which I wished only to sit
quietly by her side.

On my way home I perceived, I suddenly recollected the impression,
concealed from me until then, towards which, without letting me
distinguish or recognise it, the cold, almost sooty smell of the
trellised pavilion had borne me. It was that of my uncle Adolphe's
little sitting–room at Combray, which had indeed exhaled the same
odour of humidity. But I could not understand, and I postponed the
attempt to discover why the recollection of so trivial an impression
had given me so keen a happiness. It struck me, however, that I did
indeed deserve the contempt of M. de Norpois; I had preferred,
hitherto, to all other writers, one whom he styled a mere
"flute–player" and a positive rapture had been conveyed to me, not by
any important idea, but by a mouldy smell.

For some time past, in certain households, the name of the
Champs–Elysées, if a visitor mentioned it, would be greeted by the
mother of the family with that air of contempt which mothers keep for
a physician of established reputation whom they have (or so they make
out) seen make too many false diagnoses to have any faith left in him;
people insisted that these gardens were not good for children, that
they knew of more than one sore throat, more than one case of measles
and any number of feverish chills for which the Champs must be held
responsible. Without venturing openly to doubt the maternal affection
of Mamma, who continued to let me play there, several of her friends
deplored her inability to see what was as plain as daylight.

Neurotic subjects are perhaps less addicted than any, despite the
time–honoured phrase, to 'listening to their insides': they can hear
so many things going on inside themselves, by which they realise later
that they did wrong to let themselves be alarmed, that they end by
paying no attention to any of them. Their nervous systems have so
often cried out to them for help, as though from some serious malady,
when it was merely because snow was coming, or because they had to
change their rooms, that they have acquired the habit of paying no
more heed to these warnings than a soldier who in the heat of battle
perceives them so little that he is capable, although dying, of
carrying on for some days still the life of a man in perfect health.
One morning, bearing arranged within me all my regular disabilities,
from whose constant, internal circulation I kept my mind turned as
resolutely away as from the circulation of my blood, I had come
running into the dining–room where my parents were already at table,
and—having assured myself, as usual, that to feel cold may mean not
that one ought to warm oneself but that, for instance, one has
received a scolding, and not to feel hungry that it is going to rain,
and not that one ought not to eat anything—had taken my place between
them when, in the act of swallowing the first mouthful of a
particularly tempting cutlet, a nausea, a giddiness stopped me, the
feverish reaction of a malady that had already begun, the symptoms of
which had been masked, retarded by the ice of my indifference, but
which obstinately refused the nourishment that I was not in a fit
state to absorb. Then, at the same moment, the thought that they would
stop me from going out if they saw that I was unwell gave me, as the
instinct of self–preservation gives a wounded man, the strength to
crawl to my own room, where I found that I had a temperature of 104,
and then to get ready to go to the Champs–Elysées. Through the languid
and vulnerable shell which encased them, my eager thoughts were urging
me towards, were clamouring for the soothing delight of a game of
prisoner's base with Gilberte, and an hour later, barely able to keep
on my feet, but happy in being by her side, I had still the strength
to enjoy it.

Françoise, on our return, declared that I had been 'taken bad,' that I
must have caught a 'hot and cold,' while the doctor, who was called in
at once, declared that he 'preferred' the 'severity,' the 'virulence'
of the rush of fever which accompanied my congestion of the lungs, and
would be no more than 'a fire of straw,' to other forms, more
'insidious' and 'septic.' For some time now I had been liable to
choking fits, and our doctor, braving the disapproval of my
grandmother, who could see me already dying a drunkard's death, had
recommended me to take, as well as the caffeine which had been
prescribed to help me to breathe, beer, champagne or brandy when I
felt an attack coming. These attacks would subside, he told me, in the
'euphoria' brought about by the alcohol. I was often obliged, so that
my grandmother should allow them to give it to me, instead of
dissembling, almost to make a display of my state of suffocation. On
the other hand, as soon as I felt an attack coming, never being quite
certain what proportions it would assume, I would grow distressed at
the thought of my grandmother's anxiety, of which I was far more
afraid than of my own sufferings. But at the same time my body, either
because it was too weak to keep those sufferings secret, or because it
feared lest, in their ignorance of the imminent disaster, people might
demand of me some exertion which it would have found impossible or
dangerous, gave me the need to warn my grandmother of my attacks with
a punctiliousness into which I finally put a sort of physiological
scruple. Did I perceive in myself a disturbing symptom which I had not
previously observed, my body was in distress so long as I had not
communicated it to my grandmother. Did she pretend to pay no
attention, it made me insist. Sometimes I went too far; and that dear
face, which was no longer able always to control its emotion as in
the past, would allow an expression of pity to appear, a painful
contraction. Then my heart was wrung by the sight of her grief; as if
my kisses had had power to expel that grief, as if my affection could
give my grandmother as much joy as my recovery, I flung myself into
her arms. And its scruples being at the same time calmed by the
certainty that she now knew the discomfort that I felt, my body
offered no opposition to my reassuring her. I protested that this
discomfort had been nothing, that I was in no sense to be pitied, that
she might be quite sure that I was now happy; my body had wished to
secure exactly the amount of pity that it deserved, and, provided that
someone knew that it 'had a pain' in its right side, it could see no
harm in my declaring that this pain was of no consequence and was not
an obstacle to my happiness; for my body did not pride itself on its
philosophy; that was outside its province. Almost every day during my
convalescence I passed through these crises of suffocation. One
evening, after my grandmother had left me comparatively well, she
returned to my room very late and, seeing me struggling for breath,
"Oh, my poor boy," she exclaimed, her face quivering with sympathy,
"you are in dreadful pain." She left me at once; I heard the outer
gate open, and in a little while she came back with some brandy which
she had gone out to buy, since there was none in the house. Presently
I began to feel better. My grandmother, who was rather flushed, seemed
'put out' about something, and her eyes had a look of weariness and
dejection.

"I shall leave you alone now, and let you get the good of this
improvement," she said, rising suddenly to go. I detained her,
however, for a kiss, and could feel on her cold cheek something
moist, but did not know whether it was the dampness of the night air
through which she had just passed. Next day, she did not come to my
room until the evening, having had, she told me, to go out. I
considered that this shewed a surprising indifference to my welfare,
and I had to restrain myself so as not to reproach her with it.