Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (17 page)

But our pleasant guide is scrupulously honest about the connection between fact and fiction: in his novel, Proust fused his Jewish relatives who lived very comfortably in the Parisian suburb of Auteuil with his father’s simpler, Catholic connections in Illiers to create one single, idyllic, and exclusively Gentile childhood, just as he would also eliminate an unnecessary sibling and make his narrator an only child. In reality, the two families, separated by class, religion, and geography, never met and many of the scenes that the writer set in Combray would have been based on events that actually took place at his great-uncle’s country house in Auteuil. That house was demolished before the turn of the century.

Deflated, I leave the museum to follow a riverside walk marked with a functional signpost but without any indication of how it corresponds to the fictional
Swann’s Way
. In the gardens, the pink hydrangeas are fading with the fall. In the byways and fields, there are still poppies, and blackberries sweet enough to eat. I return to the station by way of the bakery. One biographer has suggested that Proust’s most famous epiphany was in real life triggered by the taste of a hard rusk dipped in tea, not the soft, plump cake he described in fiction. It makes more sense when you think of it, for sponge cakes dissolve into pulp if you dip them in liquid while the hard, twice-baked biscuit would soften to a manageable tenderness. The local bakery seems unaware of this historical detail and offers its madeleines proudly at double the price of the most elegant Parisian pastry shop.

Instead, I buy the after-school snack of my own childhood, a flaky pastry with a bar of dark chocolate squirrelled away inside, and sit amongst the end-of-day commuters at the little station, chewing slowly on my
pain au chocolat
. When the clanking local train arrives, I board it and ride the short, noisy distance to Chartres. Looking out the window as I ride backwards across the plain, the fields of drooping sunflowers now retreating away from me, I consider what it is I should do, where it is I might find what I am looking for. I know there’s some kind of archive in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and I remember the talents of my girlhood friend Justine, now a professor of French literature at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Her masterful control of the idiom of academic business got me a reader’s card at the UQAM library last spring. I spent some of the summer there, before I bought my plane ticket for France, poking through all twenty-one volumes of Proust’s collected correspondence. Perhaps Justine’s letter-writing skills can work the same magic in Paris as they did at home.

I change trains at Chartres, and on the smooth ride northwards, I relax into my seat, satisfied with my decision. Tomorrow, I will begin looking for Marcel Proust in earnest.

Marcel is forging ahead with his collection of writings, and says it should be published in the spring. After much pressing, Mme Lemaire has finally delivered her illustrations, and he is also still hard at work on the novel. He has decided it is impossible to do any more work at the Mazarine in the meantime, and has been granted a year’s leave of absence from his library duties.
His energy seems high and his health stable, but I worry that this current degree of control depends increasingly on drugs. The Trional is a blessing, to be sure, but I have warned Marcel he must not become utterly dependent on it. The doctor agrees and says it is a phenomenon often observed in the medical literature that the more accustomed one becomes to a drug or medicine, the less effective it is in controlling the disease, so what started out as a cure becomes nothing more than a crutch. “Nearly all men die of their remedies and not of their illnesses.” It is Molière who told us so.

Meaning to discuss Marcel’s health with him, I wound up having a long conversation about his literary ambitions. He is still not out of bed, but was well enough this morning to be sitting up and I went to him when he rang for his breakfast just now. I tried to tell him how worried his father and I are about his health, and especially his reliance on Trional, but he, unusually, seemed loath to discuss his symptoms and turned the conversation towards his career, a topic he normally avoids. He has great hopes for
Les Plaisirs et les Jours—
that is the title he and Mme Lemaire seemed to have agreed on for their collection—and says it will launch him as a serious writer, paving the way for his novel. Anatole France himself has agreed to write a preface. Literature—that will be his career, he announced. I told him how glad I was to see him committed to a project, and spoke of the need for willpower in all things in life, whether it is one’s good health or the task of
writing. He may mingle with aristocrats, but he surely does not want to be one of those young men who spend their days entertaining their friends and their mistresses and have nothing to show for their lives at the end of them. I spoke to him of his grandfather and his uncle Louis; selling stocks, let alone selling buttons, may not seem like a prestigious career, but as they grow old, they have achievements to look back on, businesses, factories, houses, and families they built themselves, not ones they were simply handed by the previous generation. As for Marcel’s father, well, I think how many lives Adrien must have saved, and that is what encourages him forward, that sense that some things have been achieved in the past and more must be done in the future.

It is pneumonia. I sat with Uncle Louis until the early hours of the morning until Georges finally sent me home. The doctors are doing all they can, but he is barely conscious and Adrien clearly fears the worse. Marcel has volunteered to come with me this afternoon, and Dick says he will join us this evening. I am supposed to sleep now but find it impossible. Instead, I went to see Papa first thing this morning with the news. He seemed almost angry and grumbled, “Oh, that one always did make a fuss about the slightest sniffle.” I had to laugh, and bite back my tongue. It would have seemed so ridiculous to argue with him about whether or not his brother was truly dying! Instead, I pointed out that Uncle Louis was usually the robust one.

The funeral was quite touching, beautifully simple but with dozens of mourners. As Uncle Louis grew older, one had tended to forget just how many business acquaintances he had. There were men and women there I had not seen in years. Old M. Fuch, who I would have thought was long dead and I do not believe I have seen since my marriage, came up to me and did not say a word, just placed his hand on my cheek. Mme Hayman did not come, which was discreet of her, although I am sure she loved Uncle well, right until his last year. Marcel has spoken with her and she sends her condolences. She has a large soul that woman, even if it is not perhaps what some would consider a pure one! Nuna is beside herself with grief and Papa is quite despondent, more silent than usual, if that is possible, but he did manage to the walk behind the coffin, which I feared would just be too much to ask. The sight of him walking with Adrien, Georges, Marcel, and Dick did my heart good. The boys look so tall and young in their black suits and I felt somehow comforted by the sight of those five male backs, one small and shrunken, two broad in middle age, and the final pair slim and straight.

I realize Papa’s anger in recent days was at the prospect of being abandoned. With both Maman and Uncle Louis gone, he has lost those of his own age to whom he was closest, and he has never been particularly good at making friends with those younger than himself. Death of a loved one is sad enough, but to feel that it conspires to leave one increasingly alone in the world is harder still. Louis was always the leader of the two.

Adrien has been so sweet through this time, more tender somehow than when Maman died. He has been home more lately but is quiet in the house, and very solicitous of my health. Perhaps it is because he was closest to Uncle Louis of all my family and will miss him truly. Uncle was always more warm to Adrien than Papa was, I suspect that has been part of it. It is funny how one chance word or encounter can follow you through life. I remember years ago as I was putting on my wedding dress with Maman helping me, and Papa came into the room to watch the final preparations. “Well, he’s very lucky, the Christian.” he said. Adrien was not Jewish, it was only the truth, but it was the one moment where Papa showed a slight resentment that I had married an outsider. He never mentioned it before or after that day, and yet I always suspected that Adrien felt he was not entirely welcome in their house and found an ally in Louis.

I did not think we would get through yesterday. The books have been sitting in boxes at Calmann Lévy’s since Wednesday, but were officially delivered to the shops and the literary editors today. Marcel went over to pick up his copies and came home with his arms full, just bursting with excitement, like a little boy again. Adrien had already gone out when he came in, so Dick and I had to congratulate him over his achievement. Dick has not been in the house much lately, he is growing up so fast and so involved in his work at the university that he cares less and less about family affairs,
but he was very sweet about the whole thing and made a great fuss over Marcel, and ran his hand over the book’s cover the same way he caresses that new canoe of his. Reynaldo came over too this morning. Goodness, it has been ages since I have seen him and I was wondering if he and Marcel had had some kind of falling out, but they looked as pleased as ever to be with each other this afternoon, with Hahn fairly cooing over the book. After lunch, I shall have to sit down and read it, such a pleasant change from illness and sorrow.

We are still awaiting reviews, and aside from a pleasant but inconsequential mention in
Le Temps
, the papers seem to be ignoring it, which will not help with sales. Marcel says Calmann Lévy feels the price is very high and some of the papers will thus judge it to be a speciality publication and not a priority for their literary pages. It was the cover and those beautiful endpapers on which Marcel insisted that drove the price up—that and the paper, but there was not much point having Mme Lemaire contribute her art if it was not printed on the best stock. I dissuaded Marcel from going across the street to Cerisier’s yesterday so he could telephone editors himself, saying surely established writers did not do such a thing, but pretended reviews were nothing to them. I consoled him by teasing him about the difficulties of the literary life and could see he was no end pleased to have his desired profession mentioned in that way. The whole
thing has had the most deleterious effect on his bowels, forcing his father to finally prescribe a laxative.

The funeral was quiet compared to Uncle Louis’s, but I think it was what Papa would have wanted. It was difficult to see so many of the same faces in such a short span of time, and people kept telling me that he really could not have enjoyed life much without his dear brother, which is true but not what one wants to hear over and over again. Adrien says it is a blessing, and certainly he was tired of life. Better a sudden seizure, I suppose, than a lingering illness.

The last few days just seem a blur. I was frantic when they called me and rushed to his side, as though one’s own haste and anxiety can ever help the dying. I fairly tripped over Jean racing to get to the carriage and then spent hours sitting doing nothing, just watching him. He never really regained consciousness. His eyes fluttered once or twice but he did not say anything. Adrien says it is a painless way to go, that we should all wish to be thus blessed.

I was doing quite well this week, getting on with things around the house despite this ache inside, when suddenly, yesterday, the thought occurred to me that I am now well and truly an orphan. I do not know why I had not thought that before but somehow the very word seem to strike at me, and I collapsed weeping.
It is silly. A woman of forty-seven does not need her maman and papa like a little girl. Marcel is twenty-five, Dick twenty-three; they are adults themselves and Dick certainly has little need for his parents these days. It is different perhaps with Marcel, his health is such that he will always need his mother. He is still anxious about the criticism, and hopes that something should be out shortly in the
Revue Blanche
.

He was telling us yesterday at dinner about Reynaldo’s cousin Marie, whom he met last week. He says she is what the British call a bluestocking and wants to make her living with her sculpture. She sounds quite horrible, I thought.

There is discussion again about that Jewish spy who was court-martialled a year or two ago. His family have always protested his innocence, but I suppose the mother or father of the most brutal murderer would find it impossible to believe that their child were guilty of such a thing. But others are coming out in their support, and Marie-Marguerite told me yesterday that she believes the man to be innocent. One can hardly believe that the army could make such a mistake. I said so to Marie-Marguerite and she laughed at my naïveté, saying the officers are no wiser or stupider than any other group of men after all, and if I was capable of believing Adrien might occasionally make a mistake—give a patient the wrong prescription, for example—then surely I could see that an army officer might seize on a man without checking very carefully, just because
they needed to find someone guilty. She pointed out there was indeed firm evidence of spying, so somebody must have sold the papers to the Germans, but perhaps they have the wrong man.