But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart. What
had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes, on
which it rested as though expecting something, an expectancy which it
prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the exaltation with
which it already saw the expected object approaching, and with a desperate
effort to continue until its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired,
to keep the way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength,
that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open that would
otherwise automatically close. And before Swann had had time to understand
what was happening, to think: "It is the little phrase from Vinteuil's
sonata. I mustn't listen!", all his memories of the days when Odette had
been in love with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in
keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by this sudden
reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they supposed, had dawned
again, had awakened from their slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing
maddeningly in his ears, without pity for his present desolation, the
forgotten strains of happiness.
In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything of
the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the reality, he
now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the peculiar, volatile
essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all; the snowy, curled
petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed after him into his
carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the address 'Maison
Dorée,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read "My hand trembles
so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her eyebrows when she
said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before you send for me?";
he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he used to have in to
singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little working girl; could
feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that spring, the ice-cold
homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all the network of mental
habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory reactions, which had
extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes, by which his body now
found itself inextricably held. At that time he had been satisfying a
sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who
lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he
would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also; how small a thing the
actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with that formidable terror
which extended it like a cloudy halo all around her, that enormous anguish
of not knowing at every hour of the day and night what she had been doing,
of not possessing her wholly, at all times and in all places! Alas, he
recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed: "But I can see you at any
time; I am always free!"--she, who was never free now; the interest, the
curiosity that she had shewn in his life, her passionate desire that he
should do her the favour--of which it was he who, then, had felt
suspicious, as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of
his arrangements--of granting her access to his study; how she had been
obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when
he did allow her to come to him once a month, how she had first, before he
would let himself be swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her,
that custom of their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at
a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which,
since that time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken
herself of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a
need. Little had he suspected how truly he spoke when, on their third
meeting, as she repeated: "But why don't you let me come to you oftener?"
he had told her, laughing, and in a vein of gallantry, that it was for
fear of forming a hopeless passion. Now, alas, it still happened at times
that she wrote to him from a restaurant or hotel, on paper which bore a
printed address, but printed in letters of fire that seared his heart.
"Written from the Hôtel Vouillemont. What on earth can she have gone
there for? With whom? What happened there?" He remembered the gas-jets
that were being extinguished along the Boulevard des Italiens when he had
met her, when all hope was gone among the errant shades upon that night
which had seemed to him almost supernatural and which now (that night of a
period when he had not even to ask himself whether he would be annoying
her by looking for her and by finding her, so certain was he that she knew
no greater happiness than to see him and to let him take her home)
belonged indeed to a mysterious world to which one never may return again
once its doors are closed. And Swann could distinguish, standing,
motionless, before that scene of happiness in which it lived again, a
wretched figure which filled him with such pity, because he did not at
first recognise who it was, that he must lower his head, lest anyone
should observe that his eyes were filled with tears. It was himself.
When he had realised this, his pity ceased; he was jealous, now, of that
other self whom she had loved, he was jealous of those men of whom he had
so often said, without much suffering: "Perhaps she's in love with them,"
now that he had exchanged the vague idea of loving, in which there is no
love, for the petals of the chrysanthemum and the 'letter-heading' of the
Maison d'Or; for they were full of love. And then, his anguish becoming
too keen, he passed his hand over his forehead, let the monocle drop from
his eye, and wiped its glass. And doubtless, if he had caught sight of
himself at that moment, he would have added to the collection of the
monocles which he had already identified, this one which he removed, like
an importunate, worrying thought, from his head, while from its misty
surface, with his handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares.
There are in the music of the violin--if one does not see the instrument
itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which modifies
the fullness of the sound--accents which are so closely akin to those of
certain contralto voices, that one has the illusion that a singer has
taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes; one sees only
the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is still
tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one believes
that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the darkness of
its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a devil immersed
in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the air, at large,
like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the ear, as it
passes, its invisible message.
As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase
as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would consent to
appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary to procure, and
to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its apparition, Swann, who
was no more able now to see it than if it had belonged to a world of
ultra-violet light, who experienced something like the refreshing sense of
a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness with which he had been struck
as he approached it, Swann felt that it was present, like a protective
goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so as to be able to come to him
through the crowd, and to draw him aside to speak to him, had disguised
herself in this sweeping cloak of sound. And as she passed him, light,
soothing, as softly murmured as the perfume of a flower, telling him what
she had to say, every word of which he closely scanned, sorry to see them
fly away so fast, he made involuntarily with his lips the motion of
kissing, as it went by him, the harmonious, fleeting form.
