Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (14 page)

Félicie is making a fuss about wanting July rather than August for some reason, but I have told her it is quite impossible since the doctor will definitely still be here. I suppose he could go out to Auteuil or stay with a friend, but it is not particularly convenient. I suggested to her that if she really must, Geneviève could do all the cooking in July for the doctor. It was naughty of me as I knew her professional jealousy would never let her accept such an arrangement. Meanwhile, Marcel announces that he and Reynaldo H. are invited to Mme Lemaire’s château in the Marne for as many weeks as they choose to honour her with their company.

This affair of the Jewish captain is very worrying. They have charged him with treason, the papers say. So, there is an onslaught of denunciations and calls for vengeance. It makes me feel sick to read them. I fear all Jews will pay for this betrayal. Don’t such people know they owe rights and liberties all to France?

T
HERE’S A SOFT SHUFFLING
sound behind me. The library clerk is padding by my desk. He wears socks and simple sandals attached to his foot with nothing more than a single broad strap of brown vinyl. To keep them from flapping loudly, he drags his feet as though he had barely the energy to walk. I can’t think why I mistook him for Max. He is about the same height, and has dark curly hair, so they look a bit similar from the back, but the clerk is North African, with black skin and a dramatic beak where Max has a smaller nose and fairer complexion. The man in blue overalls does not float above the ground at all, I was quite wrong about that:
he plods quietly and looks visibly depressed, worn down by the burden of tending the manuscripts and keeping order in the library—or perhaps, more likely, by his own cares. If Max had cares, it seemed as though they must be glamorous secrets. There was always a whiff of exoticism about him, a tiny hint of poetic suffering. He hovered above the mundane somehow, suggesting a certain distance from life yet exuding an intense gaiety too. That was his irresistible charm. The very first time I spoke to him, I remember, he posed a mystery that drew me in.

He enters the doorway of the classroom, slinging a black knapsack full of books off his back to position it under his arm while hailing a friend in the hallway behind him.

“Are you going to be there Friday? Oh, you have to come. Yes, you will come.” His pleading is jovial; his energy infectious, his attention focused, and the flattery irresistible. The woman will surely agree. But instead she mumbles something unclear, and rushes off to catch her lecture.

Max turns and enters class—Renaissance Painting 202—happily aware he is holding up the proceedings.

Except he is not Max. Not yet. At first, he is just this man, this boy, who usually sits a few rows ahead of me. He seems to know everyone, bemoaning a fierce biology assignment with one acquaintance while planning a surprise birthday party with another. I would like to dismiss him as just another of the Varsity men with slender brains and significant means who prowl the hallways looking for sex before a liberal education. But his question about iconography last week was deft—and he does not look like them. He is neither tall nor fair, but rather slight and dark. His hair is black
and curly and long, his skin olive yet his colour high, his features small with a perfect little half pyramid of a nose delicately inserted into the middle of his face. His beard is light, but a few stray and thicker hairs sit up on his cheekbones. There, the skin is so often flushed pink that he has a permanent air of discomposure that makes his ebullient self-consciousness easier to forgive.

I have made quite a study of him, but only become convinced that we are destined to be friends when I hear him speaking French after class one day. McGill is the university of English-speaking Montreal, a bastion of the old and fading anglophone hegemony, but by the 1980s, you do occasionally hear the language of contemporary Quebec spoken even here. A newly hired mathematics professor gives some instructions to the departmental secretary. A pair of bilingual students switch into their mother tongue. They speak fast and flowing Canadian French, flattening their vowels and adding extra consonants between words, offering a little taste of the rawer, yet more vibrant voices you can hear just outside the university gates, down McGill College Avenue as the Métro driver calls out the names of the stops or the cashier at the
dépanneur
, the corner store, hands over the change. What makes this boy’s French remarkable is that it contains a totally different set of mannerisms—he dwells on his vowels, but rounding them or spreading them with an
ouu
or an
ahh
rather than twisting and pulling them. Consonants he pronounces only when unavoidable, and flings from his mouth as if they were burning pebbles. He speaks the swift French of Paris, the sharp yet rich language of the glittering metropolis, and in those few sentences overheard as I pass by in the hallway, I hear the comforting language of childhood,
as though he were not a stranger, but an old playmate newly rediscovered.

One Monday he is not in class, but on Wednesday, as I look about for him, pretending to myself I have no special need to see this curly haired boy but am merely an observer of types, he returns and sits down only a row ahead. He is early for once, and the class is not yet full. Apparently seeing no one he knows in the row beside him, he turns to look behind and meets my eye.

“Were you here on Monday?”

I nod.

“Can I borrow your notes? I couldn’t make it, I had to go home for the weekend.”

I turn back a few pages in my binder, spring open its metal clasps, and as I start to release the appropriate pages from their snare and so have an excuse to look downwards, away from his friendly gaze, I muster the courage to ask, “Where’s home?”

“Toronto.”

“Toronto?” I repeat with doubt.

“Toronto,” he replies, laughing with lightly passing bemusement at my response.

“I’ll get them back to you next week,” he says as he takes the pages with elegant, long-fingered hands that seem too big for his small person. And then, as if to seal the transaction, he offers me his name. “I’m Max. Max Segal.”

I say my name carefully, stressing that it is French:
“Marie Prévost.”

“Bonjour, Marie,”
he says, raising an amused eyebrow, and turns back to face the front.

He is now more intriguing than ever, a mythical beast, the Toronto francophone.

In Montreal, the word Toronto means two things: money and the English language.

“They don’t speak French in Toronto,” says my
grand-mère
uncomprehendingly, as though to live outside her language was to have abandoned civilization altogether.

“They don’t speak French in Toronto,” says my aunt Carole with breathless indignation, as though instead they ate their own children and danced naked in the moonlight.

“They don’t speak French in Toronto,” says my father, who has not crossed the Ottawa River into Ontario since our return from Europe. He utters it as a single, dismissive sentence that is quickly over.

“They don’t speak French in Toronto,” says my mother, lingering with a trace of sadness over the words, as though it might be rather relaxing to live in a place where only one language was in operation.

Max Segal now has a name, and a puzzle attached to it.

In the
salle des manuscrits
, the library clerk moves on, pushing his cart before him, and I return to my task. In September 1894, it was, for once, Mme Proust’s younger son who required her attention.

It does really seem that Dick will be all right. Today, the horrible little emptiness that had lodged itself at the bottom of my stomach on Saturday has disappeared. I feel as if I have not quite breathed properly for four days and can finally fill my lungs again. Adrien arrived Monday night and discussed his situation with Dr. Guinard yesterday. He says the bone
has set well and should mend without leaving any permanent weakness. To think that on Sunday I wondered if the boy would ever walk without a crutch!

Adrien has met the driver of the wagon who was very apologetic, but I suppose since Dick fell directly in his path he can hardly be blamed for not managing to stop his horse in time. Adrien says the tandem cannot have been balanced properly with only one person on it, but imagine if the girl had been with him and been hurt. That might have proved horribly awkward at the very least, if not downright disastrous. Who knows what type of family one might have found at her bedside! As it is, she is installed at Dick’s.

I have tried to be polite and discreet, which I think is necessary since she does seems rather sweet and caring. Dick looks rather amused by the situation, which is a sign, I suppose, that he is recovering well. As soon as we can move him, he shall go to Auteuil. Uncle Louis says he will be glad to have him. It has been so inconvenient having him out at this provincial hospital, but Adrien pointed out there is so much traffic in the streets these days that if he had fallen in front of a carriage in Paris, instead of a wagon at Rueil, the accident might have been far worse.

Dick is making excellent progress, and has started to hobble about the house with a stick. The colour has come back to his face. I had not realized that was why he looked so very ill until I saw him yesterday sitting in
the sunlight in the garden with rosy cheeks and knew he was really and truly on the mend. I feel a bit guilty about it all, since he had followed my advice to work less hard this summer and bought that silly bicycle. But he is full of jokes about it and is as always a hardy soul. One never has to worry about him too much. The authorities have agreed he is to postpone the commencement of his military service for at least six months.

Uncle Louis seems rather pleased to be useful, and has been fussing away over Dick like an old nursemaid. Papa came to visit yesterday too, and the pair of them fiddled with Dick’s pillows until I had to laugh. Papa is in fine form. The summer seems to have restored his spirits.

Marcel is finally sleeping, his breathing regular if rather laboured. It was a horrible attack, he was still fighting for breath when I arrived from Auteuil, wheezing with such ferocity I thought he was about to breathe his last. Uncle Louis had called a cab and I had come as quickly as I could, but still it means he must have remained some two or even three hours in that condition. He had taken Trional the night before but to no avail, and things had just gone from bad to worse in the morning. Thank goodness he finally insisted that Jean send for me. It is the pollen that triggered it. It is a bad summer for it, so much rain that everything is wonderfully green. Marie-Marguerite was complaining to me the other day that she is sniffling because of it, which she has
never experienced before. So for Marcel, it must be torture, poor boy. I gave him a second dose of Trional and sat up most of the night with him before it finally seemed to have some effect.

Adrien and I had a disagreement this morning about Marcel’s continuing attacks. The doctor says the pollen season must surely be over by now, and that if Marcel is still in bed, it is because I allow him to fancy himself ill. We have had the same discussion a hundred times, but really, when Marcel is about to collapse from his asthma, I do not know what I am supposed to do. Adrien is worried about Trional and says he will consult a colleague about its use. I argued that many doctors prescribe it, but he replied, “Only in moderation, and that boy doesn’t know the word.” He suggested that we might try burning some medicinal powders instead, that they sometimes have some positive effects on asthmatics, and he would ask his colleague about that. I have always hoped that as Marcel’s twenties advanced his breathing would improve—Adrien says these attacks are often a passing phase in young men who will settle into normal life as they grow older—but we see no respite.

My poor little wolf has missed several parties and not been able to receive any visitors except Hahn, of course, who is so very kind and devoted. If Marcel is not up when he arrives, he just sits and chats with me very pleasantly or, if I am busy, reads in the salon until Marcel wakes up. His season has started up again and is
filled with engagements, but he is here every afternoon without fail. He and Marcel have been invited to Madeleine Lemaire’s château next month—she is so fashionable she does not re-enter Paris to begin the season until December’s parties beckon—and they hope to visit her if Marcel’s health permits.

Adrien is increasingly disheartened by the slow progress of negotiations with the Germans and says he has abandoned all hope of ever bringing the English on side at all. He came in to dinner yesterday angered by a letter he had received in the afternoon post and made quite a speech about it while we ate. He may be frustrated by others’ recalcitrance but at least he never loses confidence in his project. He was angry enough that I suggested he might just take a break from it for a while and leave it to others, and he instantly was his usual self, and said that was nonsense, he would go on and attend the German conferences as planned. He does look careworn these days, and it was not an easy autumn with Dick’s accident. Although it is more Marcel about whom he worries.

I received the most touching letter from Marcel this morning. Although it rains without ceasing at Réveillon, he and Hahn are warm in their rooms where the one devotes himself to writing, the other to composition. Marcel is working on his story, which he
has now given the title “La Mort de Baldassare Silvande,” after its hero. He is convinced that he will write a novel next and has Reynaldo’s encouragement. He writes that his only goal is to live a life devoted to the arts, surrounded by those he loves.