Before descending into the mystery of a deep and flawless valley carpeted with moonlight, we stopped for a moment like two insects about to plunge into the blue calyx of a flower. Gilberte then uttered, perhaps simply out of the politeness of a hostess who is sorry you are going away so soon and would have liked to show you more of a countryside which you seem to appreciate, an avowal of the sort in which her practice as a woman of the world skilled in putting to the best advantage silence, simplicity, sobriety in the express of her feelings, makes you believe that you occupy a place in her life which no one else would fill. Opening my heart to her suddenly with a tenderness born of the exquisite air, the fragrant evening breeze, I said to her: "You were speaking the other day of the little footpath. How I loved you then!" She replied: "Why didn't you tell me? I had no idea. I loved you too. In fact I flung myself twice at your head." "When?" "The first time at Tonsonville. You were going for a walk with your family, and I was on my way home. I'd never seen such a pretty little boy. I was in the habit," she went on with a vaguely bashful air, "of going to play with little boys I knew in the ruins of the keep of Roussainville. And you will tell me that I was a very naughty girl, for there were girls and boys there of all sorts who took advantage of the darkness. The altar-boy from Combray church, Theodore, who, I must admit, was very nice indeed (goodness, how handsome he was!) and who has become quite ugly (he's the chemist now at Megeglise), used to amuse himself with all the peasant girls of the district. As I was allowed to go out by myself, whenever I was able to get away, Used to rush over there. I can't tell you how I longed for you to come there too; I remember quite well that, as I had only a moment in which to make you understand what I wanted, at the risk of being seen by your people and mine, I signalled to you so vulgarly that I'm ashamed of it to this day. But you stared at me so crossly that I saw that you didn't want to."
And suddenly I thought to myself that the true Gilberte, the true Albertine, were perhaps those who had at the first moment yields themselves with their eyes, one through the hedge of pink hawthorn, the other on the beach. And it was I who, having been incapable of understanding this, having failed to recapture the impression until much later in my memory after an interval in which, as a result of my conversation, a dividing hedge of sentiment had made them afraid to be as frank as in the first moments, had ruined everything by my clumsiness. I had "botched it" more completely - although in fact the comparative failure with them was less absurd - and for the same reasons as Saint-Loup with Rachel.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained, pp. 711-712
Is there anything worse than the pain of a lost love? Doubtless, and the most obvious choice would be a "botched" lost love. Gilberte and Marcel are on a walk when he admits to her, "How I loved you then!" Classically, she replies: "Why didn't you tell me? I had no idea. I loved you too." She continues on with an amusing anecdote about her own youthful adventures, and other boys and girls who "took advantage of the darkness." Not surprisingly, Marcel hears little of her story because he's immediately saddened by this lost opportunity: "And it was I who, having been incapable of understanding this, having failed to recapture the impression until much later in my memory after an interval in which, as a result of my conversation, a dividing hedge of sentiment had made them afraid to be as frank as in the first moments, had ruined everything by my clumsiness." We've all been in exactly the same situation, although doubtless in our memories we've built a much more dramatic and definite and romantic narrative than the moment actually held.
No comments:
Post a Comment