Apart from the fact that habit so fills up our time that we have not, after a few months, a free moment in a town where on our first arrival the day offered us the absolute disposal of all its twelve hours, if one of these had by an chance fallen vacant it would no longer have occurred to me to devote it to visiting some church for the sake of which I had first come to Balbec, or even if compare a scene painted by Elstir with the sketch that I had seen of it in his studio, but rather to go and play one more game of chess with M. Fere. It was indeed the corrupting effect, as it was also the charm, of this country round Balbec, to have become for me a land of familiar acquaintances; if its territorial distribution, its extensive cultivation, along the entire length of the coast, with different forms of agriculture, gave of necessity to the visits which I paid to these different friends the aspect of a journey, they also reduced that journey to the agreeable proportions of a series of visits. The same place-names, so disturbing to me in the past that the mere Country House Directory of the Manche, caused me as much dismay as the railway time-table, had become so familiar to me that even in that time-table itself I could have consulted the page headed Balbec to Douville via Doncieres with the same happy tranquility as an address book. In this too social valley, along the blanks of which I felt that there clung, whether visible or not, a numerous company of friends, the poetical cry of the evening was no longer that of the owl or the frog, but the "How goes it?" of M. de Criquetot of the "Khaire" of Brichat. Its atmosphere no longer aroused anguish, and, charged with purely human exhalations, was easily breathable, indeed almost too soothing. The benefit that I did at least derive from it was that of looking at things only from a practical point of view. The idea of marrying Albertine appeared to me to be madness.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 1148-1149
And so we have finally come to the end of "Part Two: Chapter Three" of Cities of the Plain. Only "Chapter Four" remains and then we'll be moving on to the fifth book, The Captive. I suppose the line that should jump out at me most dramatically is the last, "The idea of marrying Albertine appeared to me to be madness." That said, in this little passage it's not the line that grabs my attention. Of course, part of this relates to the fact that, per usual, I've been reading ahead, and, well, trying to discern a final answer on Marcel's love for Albertine is a fool's errand. Coming hard on the heels of my recent Zanzibar trip, what struck me was Marcel's realization that Balbec no longer gave him pain. Proust tells us, "The same place-names, so disturbing to me in the past that the mere Country House Directory of the Manche, caused me as much dismay as the railway time-table, had become so familiar to me that even in that time-table itself I could have consulted the page headed Balbec to Douville via Doncieres with the same happy tranquility as an address book. In this too social valley, along the blanks of which I felt that there clung, whether visible or not, a numerous company of friends, the poetical cry of the evening was no longer that of the owl or the frog, but the "How goes it?" of M. de Criquetot of the "Khaire" of Brichat." And so, in the end, "Its atmosphere no longer aroused anguish, and, charged with purely human exhalations, was easily breathable, indeed almost too soothing." Before my first return trip to Zanzibar I was filled, not necessarily with dread, but rather with a tender melancholy. On my first visit there I was in love and very happy, and my fear was that I would see her on every street corner, and would be so consumed by the past that the trip itself would be painful. On this latest trip I thought of Laura often, but with only the warmest of memories. As I told my friend Steve, I hope she finds someone who truly gives her joy and that she's the happiest woman in the world. Rather than pain, I instead just felt gratitude, not only for our trip to Zanzibar, but also for every silly moment we ever spent together. I've found peace with my memories of Zanzibar and of her. Remembrance of things past, indeed.
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