In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV (28 page)

It was not on that evening, however, that my cruel mistrust began to take solid form. No, to reveal it here and now, although the incident did not occur until some weeks later, it arose out of a remark made by Cottard. On the day in question Albertine and her friends had wanted to drag me to the casino at Incarville where, to my ultimate good fortune, I would not have joined them (wanting to pay a visit to Mme Verdurin who had invited me several times), had I not been held up at Incarville itself by a train breakdown which required a considerable time to repair. As I strolled up and down waiting for the men to finish working at it, I found myself all of a sudden face to face with Dr Cottard, who had come to Incarville to see a patient. I almost hesitated to greet him as he had not answered any of my letters. But friendliness does not express itself in everyone in the same way. Not having been brought up to observe the same fixed rules of behaviour as society people, Cottard was full of good intentions of which one knew nothing and even denied the existence, until the day when he had an opportunity of displaying them. He apologised, had indeed received my letters, had reported my whereabouts to the Verdurins who were most anxious to see me and whom he urged me to go and see. He even proposed to take me there that very evening, for he was waiting for the little local train to take him back there for dinner. As I was uncertain and as he had still some time before his train (for the breakdown threatened to be a fairly long one), I made him come with me to the little casino, one of those that had struck me as being so gloomy on the evening of my first arrival, now filled with the tumult of the girls, who, in the absence of male partners, were dancing together. Andrée came sliding along the floor towards me; I was meaning to go off with Cottard in a moment to the Verdurins’, when I finally declined his offer, seized by an irresistible desire to stay with Albertine. The fact was that I had just heard her laugh. And this laugh at once evoked the flesh-pink, fragrant surfaces with which it seemed to have just been in contact and of which it seemed to carry with it, pungent, sensual and revealing as the scent of geraniums, a few almost tangible and secretly provoking particles.

One of the girls, a stranger to me, sat down at the piano, and Andrée invited Albertine to waltz with her. Happy in the thought that I was going to remain in this little casino with these girls, I remarked to Cottard how well they danced together. But he, taking the professional point of view of a doctor and with an ill-breeding which overlooked the fact that they were my friends, although he must have seen me greet them, replied: “Yes, but parents are very rash to allow their daughters to form such habits. I should certainly never let mine come here. Are they pretty, though? I can’t make out their features. There now, look,” he went on, pointing to Albertine and Andrée who were waltzing slowly, tightly clasped together, “I’ve left my glasses behind and I can’t see very well, but they are certainly keenly roused. It’s not sufficiently known that women derive most excitement through their breasts. And theirs, as you see, are touching completely.” And indeed the contact between the breasts of Andrée and of Albertine had been constant. I do not know whether they heard or guessed Cottard’s observation, but they drew slightly apart while continuing to waltz. At that moment Andrée said something to Albertine, who laughed with the same deep and penetrating laugh that I had heard before. But the unease it roused in me this time was nothing but painful; Albertine appeared to be conveying, to be making Andrée share, some secret and voluptuous thrill. It rang out like the first or the last chords of an alien celebration. I left the place with Cottard, absorbed in conversation with him, thinking only at odd moments of the scene I had just witnessed. Not that Cottard’s conversation was interesting. It had indeed, at that moment, become rather sour, for we had just seen Dr du Boulbon go past without noticing us. He had come down to spend some time on the other side of the bay from Balbec, where he was greatly in demand. Now, albeit Cottard was in the habit of declaring that he did no professional work during the holidays, he had hoped to build up a select practice along the coast, an ambition which du Boulbon’s presence there was likely to hinder. Certainly, the Balbec doctor could not stand in Cottard’s way. He was merely a thoroughly conscientious doctor who knew everything, and to whom you could not mention the slightest itch without his immediately prescribing, in a complicated formula, the ointment, lotion or liniment that would put you right. As Marie Gineste used to say in her pretty parlance, he knew how to “charm” cuts and sores. But he was in no way eminent. True, he had caused Cottard some slight annoyance. The latter, now that he was anxious to exchange his chair for that of Therapeutics, had begun to specialise in toxic actions. These, a perilous innovation in medicine, give an excuse for changing the labels in the chemists’ shops, where every preparation is declared to be in no way toxic, unlike its substitutes, and indeed to be disintoxicant. It is the fashionable cry; at the most there may survive below in illegible lettering, like the faint trace of an older fashion, the assurance that the preparation has been carefully antisepticised. Toxic actions serve also to reassure the patient, who learns with joy that his paralysis is merely a toxic disturbance. Now, a grand duke who had come for a few days to Balbec and whose eye was extremely swollen had sent for Cottard who, in return for a wad of hundred-franc notes (the Professor refused to see anyone for less), had put down the inflammation to a toxic condition and prescribed a disintoxicant treatment. As the swelling did not go down, the grand duke fell back upon the general practitioner of Balbec, who in five minutes had removed a speck of dust. The following day, the swelling had gone. A celebrated specialist in nervous diseases was, however, a more dangerous rival. He was a rubicund, jovial man, at once because the constant society of nervous wrecks did not prevent him from enjoying excellent health, and also in order to reassure his patients by the hearty merriment of his “Good morning” and “Good-bye,” while quite ready to lend the strength of his muscular arms to fastening them in strait-jackets later on. Nevertheless, whenever you spoke to him at a gathering, whether political or literary, he would listen to you with benevolent attention, as though he were saying: “What can I do for you?” without at once giving an opinion, as though it were a medical consultation. But anyhow he, whatever his talent might be, was a specialist. And so the whole of Cottard’s rage was concentrated upon du Boulbon. But I soon took my leave of the Verdurins’ professor friend, and returned to Balbec, after promising him that I would pay them a visit before long.

The mischief that his remarks about Albertine and Andrée had done me was extreme, but its worst effects were not immediately felt by me, as happens with those forms of poisoning which begin to act only after a certain time.

Albertine, on the night the lift-boy had failed to find her, did not appear, in spite of his assurances. There is no doubt that a person’s charms are a less frequent cause of love than a remark such as: “No, this evening I shan’t be free.” We barely notice this remark if we are with friends; we remain gay all the evening, a certain image never enters our mind; during those hours it remains dipped in the necessary solution; when we return home we find the plate developed and perfectly clear. We become aware that life is no longer the life which we would have surrendered for a trifle the day before, because, even if we continue not to fear death, we no longer dare think of a parting.

From, however, not one o’clock in the morning (the limit fixed by the lift-boy), but three o’clock, I no longer felt as in former times the distress of seeing the chance of her coming diminish. The certainty that she would not now come brought me a complete and refreshing calm; this night was simply a night like so many others during which I did not see her—such was the notion on which I based myself. And thenceforth the thought that I should see her next day or some other day, outlining itself upon the blank which I submissively accepted, became comforting. Sometimes, during these nights of waiting, our anguish is due to a drug which we have taken. The sufferer, misinterpreting his own symptoms, thinks that he is anxious about the woman who fails to appear. Love is engendered in these cases, as are certain nervous ailments, by the inaccurate interpretation of a painful discomfort. An interpretation which it is useless to correct, at any rate so far as love is concerned, it being a sentiment which (whatever its cause) is invariably erroneous.

Next day, when Albertine wrote to me that she had only just got back to Epreville, and so had not received my note in time, and would come, if she might, to see me that evening, behind the words of her letter, as behind those that she had said to me once over the telephone, I thought I could detect the presence of pleasures, of people, whom she had preferred to me. Once again, my whole body was stirred by the painful longing to know what she could have been doing, by the latent love which we always carry within us; I almost thought for a moment that it was going to bind me to Albertine, but it did no more than shudder on the spot and its last echoes died out without its getting under way.

I had failed, during my first visit to Balbec—and perhaps, for that matter, Andrée had failed equally—to understand Albertine’s character. I had believed it was through simple frivolity on her part that all our supplications didn’t succeed in keeping her with us and making her forgo a garden-party, a donkey-ride, a picnic. During my second visit to Balbec, I began to suspect that this frivolity was merely a semblance, the garden-party a mere screen, if not an invention. There occurred in a variety of forms a phenomenon of which the following is an example (a phenomenon as seen by me, of course, from my side of the glass, which was by no means transparent, and without my having any means of determining what reality there was on the other side). Albertine was making the most passionate protestations of affection. She looked at the time because she had to go and call upon a lady who was at home, it appeared, every afternoon at five o’clock, at Infreville. Tormented by suspicion, and feeling at the same time far from well, I asked Albertine, I implored her to stay with me. It was impossible (and indeed she could stay only five minutes longer) because it would anger the lady who was rather inhospitable, susceptible and, said Albertine, very boring. “But one can easily cut a social call.” “No, my aunt has always told me that one must above all be polite.” “But I’ve often seen you being impolite.” “It’s not the same thing, this lady would be angry with me and would get me into trouble with my aunt. I’m pretty well in her bad books already. She insists that I should go and see her at least once.” “But if she’s at home every day?” Here Albertine, feeling that she was caught, changed her line of argument. “I know she’s at home every day. But today I’ve made arrangements to meet some other girls there. It will be less boring that way.” “So then, Albertine, you prefer this lady and your friends to me since, rather than miss paying a boring call, you prefer to leave me here alone, sick and wretched?” “That the visit will be boring is neither here nor there. I’m going for their sake. I shall bring them home in my trap. Otherwise they won’t have any way of getting back.” I pointed out to Albertine that there were trains from Infreville up to ten o’clock at night. “Quite true, but don’t you see, it’s possible that we may be asked to stay to dinner. She’s very hospitable.” “Very well then, you’ll refuse.” “I should only make my aunt angry.” “Besides, you can dine with her and catch the ten o’clock train.” “It’s cutting it rather fine.” “Then I can never go and dine in town and come back by train. But listen, Albertine, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I feel that the fresh air will do me good; since you can’t give up your lady, I’ll come with you to Infreville. Don’t be alarmed, I shan’t go as far as the Tour Elisabeth” (the lady’s villa), “I shall see neither the lady nor your friends.” Albertine looked as though she had received a violent blow. For a moment, she was unable to speak. She explained that the sea bathing was not doing her any good. “If you don’t want me to come with you?” “How can you say such a thing, you know that there’s nothing I enjoy more than going out with you.” A sudden change of tactics had occurred. “Since we’re going out together,” she said to me, “why not go in the other direction. We might dine together. It would be so nice. After all, that side of Balbec is much the prettier. I’m getting sick and tired of Infreville and all those little cabbage-green places.” “But your aunt’s friend will be annoyed if you don’t go and see her.” “Very well, let her be.” “No, it’s wrong to annoy people.” “But she won’t even notice that I’m not there, she has people every day; I can go tomorrow, the next day, next week, the week after, it’s exactly the same.” “And what about your friends?” “Oh, they’ve ditched me often enough. It’s my turn now.” “But from the direction you suggest there’s no train back after nine.” “Well, what’s the matter with that? Nine will do perfectly. Besides, one should never worry about how to get back. We can always find a cart, a bike or, if the worst comes to the worst, we have legs.” “‘We can always find.’ Albertine, how you go on! Out Infreville way, where the villages run into one another, well and good. But the other way, it’s a very different matter.” “That way too. I promise to bring you back safe and sound.” I sensed that Albertine was giving up for my sake some plan arranged beforehand of which she refused to tell me, and that there was someone else who would be as unhappy as I was. Seeing that what she had intended to do was out of the question, since I insisted upon accompanying her, she was giving it up altogether. She knew that the loss was not irremediable. For, like all women who have a number of irons in the fire, she could rely on something that never fails: suspicion and jealousy. Of course she did not seek to arouse them, quite the contrary. But lovers are so suspicious that they instantly scent out falsehood. With the result that Albertine, being no better than anyone else, knew from experience (without for a moment imagining that she owed it to jealousy) that she could always be sure of not losing the people she had jilted for an evening. The unknown person whom she was deserting for me would be hurt, would love her all the more for that (though Albertine did not know that this was the reason), and, so as not to prolong the agony, would return to her of his own accord, as I should have done. But I had no desire either to give pain to another, or to tire myself, or to enter upon the terrible path of investigation, of multiform, unending vigilance. “No, Albertine, I don’t want to spoil your pleasure. You can go to your lady at Infreville, or rather the person for whom she is a pseudonym, it’s all the same to me. The real reason why I’m not coming with you is that you don’t want me to, because the outing with me is not the one you wanted—the proof of it is that you’ve contradicted yourself at least five times without noticing it.” Poor Albertine was afraid that her contradictions, which she had not noticed, had been more serious than they were. Not knowing exactly what fibs she had told me, “It’s quite on the cards that I did contradict myself,” she said. “The sea air makes me lose my head altogether. I’m always calling things by the wrong names.” And (what proved to me that she would not, now, require many tender affirmations to make me believe her) I felt a stab in my heart as I listened to this admission of what I had but faintly imagined. “Very well, that’s settled, I’m off,” she said in a tragic tone, not without looking at the time to see whether she was making herself late for the other person, now that I had provided her with an excuse for not spending the evening with myself. “It’s too bad of you. I alter all my plans to spend a nice evening with you, and it’s you that won’t have it, and you accuse me of telling lies. I’ve never known you to be so cruel. The sea shall be my tomb. I shall never see you any more.” At these words my heart missed a beat, although I was certain that she would come again next day, as she did. “I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the sea.” “Like Sappho.” “There you go, insulting me again. You suspect not only what I say but what I do.” “But, my lamb, I didn’t mean anything, I swear to you. You know Sappho flung herself into the sea.” “Yes, yes, you have no faith in me.” She saw from the clock that it was twenty minutes to the hour; she was afraid of missing her appointment, and choosing the shortest form of farewell (for which as it happened she apologised on coming to see me again next day, the other person presumably not being free then), she dashed from the room, crying: “Good-bye for ever,” in a heartbroken tone. And perhaps she was heartbroken. For, knowing what she was about at that moment better than I, at once more severe and more indulgent towards herself than I was towards her, she may after all have had a fear that I might refuse to see her again after the way in which she had left me. And I believe that she was attached to me, so much so that the other person was more jealous than I was.