My Years With Proust - Day 636

   The memory of Albertine had become so fragmentary that it no longer caused me any sadness and as no more now than a transition to fresh desires, like a chord which announces a change of key.  And indeed, any idea of a passing sensual whim being ruled out, in so far as I was still faithful to Albertine's memory, I was happier at having Andree in my company than I would have been at having an Albertine miraculously restored to life.  For Andree could tell me more things about Albertine than Albertine herself had ever told me.  Now the problems concerns Albertine still remained in my mind although my tenderness for her, both physically and mentally, had already vanished.  And my desire to know about her life, because it had diminished less, was now relatively greater than my need of her presence.  Moreover, the idea that a woman had perhaps had relations with Albertine no longer aroused in me anything save the desire to have relations with that woman myself.  I told Andree this, caressing her as I spoke.  Then, without making the slightest effort to make her words consistent with those of a few months earlier, Andree said to me with a lurking smile: "Ah! yes, but you're a man.  And so we can't do quite the same things as I used to do with Albertine." And whether because she felt that it would increase my desire (in the hope of extracting confidences, I had told her that I would like to have relations with a woman who had had them with Albertine) or my grief, or perhaps destroy a sense of superiority to herself which she might suppose me to feel at being the only person who had had relations with Albertine . . ."

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 612

Andree: "Ah! yes, but you're a man.  And so we can't do quite the same things as I used to do with Albertine."

[Mike Drop]

Albertine and Andree had many things in common: they were friends; we wish that Proust would have given us more information as to their inner worlds (although, as Hitchcock told us, suspense comes from what the artist doesn't tell you); they were lovers (probably); and they both seemed to instantly see through Marcel's traps and further wind him up, if not level him. 

Now, Andree's motives are a more interesting question.  Marcel himself isn't certain, proposing that "it would increase my desire . . . or my grief, or perhaps destroy a sense of superiority to herself which she might suppose me to feel . . ."  Marcel had begun to feel better, and realized that, "The memory of Albertine had become so fragmentary that it no longer caused me any sadness and as no more now than a transition to fresh desires, like a chord which announces a change of key."  Maybe Andree is just punishing him for beginning to forget Albertine.