My Years With Proust - Day 491

   At the same time, my choice of Andree (who happened to be staying in Paris, having given up her plan of returning to Balbec) as guide and companion to my mistress was prompted by what Albertine had told me of the affection that her friend had felt for me at Balbec, at a time when, on the contrary, I was afraid that I bored her; indeed, if I had known this at the time, it is perhaps with Andree that I would have fallen in love.

   "What, you never knew?" said Albertine, "but we were always joking about it.  Do you mean to say you never noticed how she used to copy all your ways of talking and arguing?  Especially when she'd just been with you, it was really striking.  She had no need to tell us whether she had seen you.  As soon as she joined us, we could tell at once.  We used to look at one another and laugh.  She was like a coalheaver who tries pretend that he isn't one, although he's black all over.  A miller has no need to say that he's a miller - you can see the flour all over his clothes, and the mark of the sacks he has carried on his shoulder.  Andree was just the same, she would twist her eyebrows the way you do, and stretch out her long neck, and I don't know what all.  When I pick up a book that has been in your room, even if I'm reading it out of doors, I can tell at once where it's been because it still has a faint whiff of your beastly fumigations.  It's only the tiniest thing - I can't really explain - but it's rather a nice thing really.  Anyhow whenever anybody spoke nicely about you, seemed to think lots of you, Andree was in ecstasies."

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 12

Albertine tries to convince Marcel that actually, unbeknownst to him, Andree had always carried strong feelings for him. Marcel goes on to say that if he had known this all along "it is perhaps with Andree that I would have fallen in love."  Ah, the vagaries of love, and I'm saying that not simply because I'm working my way through the British series Skins (how appropriately metaphoric was the scene where Sid and Cassie passed each other on opposite trains going to and coming from Scotland; yes, I know, a popular culture reference - thankfully my students never read this blog). That said, I'm mainly interested in the ways that you pick up the mannerisms and peculiar speech patterns of the ones you love, which is especially troublesome when your relationship is of a more illicit nature and unexpected changes in manner and speech are little landmines.  Even when the relationship ends they still end up being those things we carry (to paraphrase Tim O'Brien).  In my life the most obvious example was Laura, who, because she was British, normally tossed around (to me) odd turns of phrase which eventually became part of my everyday lexicon, and which still pop up now and then today.  I think the only peculiar saying she ever adapted from me was my typical rejective "fuck that noise," and I sometimes wonder if she still unconsciously says it today (and has probably long forgotten where she heard it, and there's your metaphor).