Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (24 page)

For the first time that day, Sarah could feel the solid ground beneath the tight little satin pumps that, she now realized, were pinching her toes. She put down the knife, leaving a smear of white icing on the pristine glass cake plate, and extended a hand down the long table, reaching towards her husband as she said his name:

“Daniel.”

M
AX SUFFERS
.

It is not a physical pain that nags his body but rather some gentle anguish disturbing his soul. Every day, he wraps himself in a glittering social garment of lively conversation, bright charm, and excited flattery, yet beneath it you can sometimes glimpse the soiled rag of sorrow in the heave of his sigh or a brief vacancy in his eyes. His only willing display of this emotion is as some kind of juvenile ennui: he is reading Goethe,
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, the book that made suicide fashionable amongst eighteenth-century boys. Perhaps this is why at first I dismiss his hurt too easily, underestimate it as so much undergraduate pretension, long talks in dark coffee houses about the existence of God and why the camps ever happened.

“The world is shit.”

“Is it?” I am hesitant, as though trying to pacify him.

“Yeah, look around. Shit. I don’t know how anyone could think there was some god presiding over this.”

“Well, it’s about faith, I believe, or at least I think I do.”

I don’t understand his alienation, can’t glimpse its source, and sense that his cynicism could one day form a wall between us. Yet he trusts me to listen, seems to value some intelligence in me that I don’t myself recognize.

“Marie,” he will say, fixing me with an earnest gaze, “do you believe the world is good, or is it rather fundamentally evil?”

It is all I can do to keep from laughing, they are so self-consciously philosophical these questions. Max lugs around consciousness like a small child trying to drag a big chair, while I have learned that it is a burden best laid aside. Without a word, my family has taught me that well: In moments of extremity, my mother goes out shopping and my father pours
another drink. From time to time, they put on good clothes and seek some unthinking solace in the mass.

Yet, Max and I are both at an age where we believe in solutions, and think we are better than our parents, so for the sake of our friendship I puzzle hard and try to offer him answers. Besides, this way I can distinguish myself from amongst his many friends. I am not one of his set, rarely go to the university parties and worry that I must be less desirable to him than the other girls he meets. So I have decided that our companionship is something higher, some kind of intellectual bond, and I use his anxiety as the occasion for intimacy.

“There is good, there is love, you have to believe that… What worries you so much? We live in nice houses, our clothes are warm, we always have food.”

Over our university years, Max’s questions grow more subtle, my responses less banal, but his kernel of suffering always endures. As both our friendship and we ourselves mature, I have to acknowledge that this anguish is no pose, but somehow fundamental to Max.

Of course, I have identified the obvious culprit from the first, and try tactfully to initiate discussions of his family’s past, but I find his answers curt and almost callous.

“Do you ever think of going there?”

“Paris, sure, I went there last summer.”

“No, I mean Auschwitz. Do you ever think, well, of visiting Auschwitz?”

“Why bother? Probably just some field and a bunch of huts.”

“You might find out… well, you might find out something.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know.” I have no answer so instead I say, “I read somewhere that the barracks… there was this storehouse, where they put all clothes and stuff that they collected from people, as they arrived… and the storehouse, the prisoners called it Canada… because it was a place of wealth, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’ve read that too.” He is silent again, and I change tack.

“It must be hard for your mother.”

“I don’t know. She can probably barely remember.”

“Max. She was ten? twelve?”

“Yeah, about that, twelve or so.”

“You can remember everything from that age. I was thirteen when we left Paris and I remember everything about it. Does she ever talk about what happened?”

“A bit, when I was younger. You know the speech. It must never happen again, and all that.”

“Imagine what it must feel like though, for her. I mean, imagine losing your parents when you were twelve years old.”

“Yeah.”

I try to bring Max around on this, to lead him gently towards some sympathy for a loss that must be felt lifelong, but he will not discuss it further. I am forced to recognize that for him she is merely the familiar, domestic figure of his own mother, and so he cannot impart to her the nobility that I do without ever having met her.

On the rare occasions when Max voluntarily mentions his mother, he talks not about her history but about her present incarnation, hinting at persistent demands and outrageous anxieties.

“My mother phoned…”

“I just have to go call my mother…”

His tone suggests saintly forbearance.

“She worries, Max, what’s wrong with that?”

“Yeah, well, I wish she wouldn’t.”

Now, there’s annoyance, even contempt in his voice.

“My mother wants me to apply for med school.”

“I’m not sure about med school, but my mother…”

He sounds exhausted.

“She wants you to get a good job, Max. It’s only natural.”

“It’s not natural.”

“What do you mean?”

Cornered, he finds an example for me. After much parental pressure, he has indeed applied to the McGill medical school and has been accepted. He is to begin the program the next fall. When he phoned his mother to tell her, she announced that this was the happiest day of her life.

“The happiest day of her life?”

“Yeah. The… happiest… day… of… her… life.” He stresses each word separately with bitter sarcasm.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Now, I wouldn’t starve or something.”

It seems to me an odd choice—was her own wedding day not happier? Or the day Max was born? What will she say if Max some day presents her with a grandchild? Her priorities are strange to me, and I puzzle over her statement, only concluding again that she must be haunted by her past.

Max refuses that past, will not mourn his grandparents or even admit to regret that he never met them. Yet still he carries some larger wound and seems to live under a shadow of what has gone before. Whatever his feelings for his mother’s losses, he says he is “coming to terms with his Judaism.” I am Catholic and unsure what that might mean.
In the
salle des manuscrits
, the North African clerk shuffles by my desk, sighing over some hidden trouble as he passes. He pauses to check that there is no forbidden ballpoint in sight, and moves slowly on, frowning now as he goes. I watch him leave and then dip back to File 263. In September 1897, Mme Proust returned to Paris from a holiday with Marcel in the German spa town of Kreuznach, and took up a fresh notebook. Proust was working on an autobiographical novel in those years, an immature work he would later abandon, but it is surely the case of “that Jewish spy” that will preoccupy our diarist and her son in the months to come.

Dick has convinced Marcel of Dreyfus’s innocence, and Marie-Marguerite agrees with them. They argue it is nothing but blind prejudice that led to his arrest in the first place. Marcel confides in me that he finds the salons difficult this season as there is much talk of Dreyfus and, in some, repeated denunciations of the Jews. Dick says some students have started to whisper behind the back of one of the professors who is also Jewish. The boys have not raised the issue with their father, for it is clear to all of us that his sentiments lie in the opposite direction. He cannot believe that the army would allow a miscarriage of justice to take place. I only wish I could agree with him, but more and more I think of that poor soul on Devil’s Island and wonder how he suffers.

Marcel’s pollenosis is not nearly as bad as it was in the spring, but still he sniffles and rubs his eyes ferociously. It is funny to long for colder weather but so we do.

Marcel had a most difficult dinner out in Passy Tuesday evening. He had gone with Lucien to visit the Comte de Montesquiou and they were enjoying themselves thoroughly until conversation turned to the subject of Dreyfus. The Count is certain of his guilt and made some sort of remark about the Jews—Marcel wished to spare my feelings and would not repeat just what was said. Whatever it was, he felt he could not let such words stand, and reminded the Count of my ancestry. The Count, always so eager to stress his great aristocratic antecedents and perhaps hoping to change the subject, replied by listing his own ancestors, but then, warming to his subject, concluded that he was proud to assert there was not a Jew among them. Marcel was further hurt by this and stayed only as long as was strictly necessary before excusing himself. Poor Lucien did not know what to do and did not wish to appear impolite to his host, so Marcel left him behind.

Adrien is very pleased—one of the medical publications that came in this morning’s mail contained a glowing review of his book, and also praised in more general terms his work against disease. History will vindicate his efforts and remember his name.

I have been reading sections of
Jean Santeuil!
Marcel writes such a beautiful French, I cannot but believe this novel will make a literary reputation for him one day. There are the most exquisite passages inspired by
our summers in Illiers—Marcel describes with loving detail how to mix the strawberries into the cream cheese, measuring the colour as you go along. Perhaps I shall be remembered in the annals of literature as Mme Santeuil!

I confess I approached my reading with some trepidation, as I know Marcel did, since the novel is largely autobiographical, but the portrait is not unflattering after all. (Or perhaps Marcel is just not showing me the bits he feels might offend me. What a thought!) The one part where the mother looks a bit barbaric is about the girl with whom Jean is infatuated.

According to Marcel’s account, the mother insists he stop visiting the girl, because she believes his passion is making him ill, but succeeds only in making him more sick in the end.

Perhaps I was wrong to put a stop to his love for the Benardaky girl. It seemed so unhealthy at the time, but certainly my censoring it has not cured him of infatuations. Indeed, his lady loves are never more than that. Marcel has made the girl’s family very wealthy, but if I remember correctly, the Benardakys were perfectly ordinary folk, if a bit exotic with their Russian name and all that—were, probably still are. I imagine they still live in that poky little apartment over on the Rue de Chaillot.

But I indulge myself. Posterity will judge a great novel, not the writer’s mother, to be sure. I returned the pages to Marcel this afternoon and could find almost nothing to say, he makes my heart swell with so much emotion. I only told him that one day he would make his father very proud.

After yesterday’s revelation, the papers are all scrambling to deny the remarkable news. The
Figaro
has had a real coup even if the others will not admit it. Marcel was up unusually early—I suspect he did not sleep at all with the excitement—and he and Dick and I have spent the morning poring over the
Figaro
. Fortunately, the doctor was not in the house, although I wonder now whether he will be able to maintain that the army has done everything for the best. Esterhazy’s letter is remarkable—imagine such contempt for France in a military officer. And while none of us are handwriting experts, it seems clear that it is he who also wrote the note to the Germans in the first place. Apparently, there was indeed a spy in the ranks, but the army has the wrong man. Surely now it will not be long before Dreyfus is brought home. His poor wife must be so relieved.

Georges was here for Sunday dinner, and says they are to extend the Avenue Mozart right where Uncle’s house stands, so that it must be torn down. Such a shame for that garden to be lost, but they call this sort of thing progress.

Adrien caught Marcel outside the house tipping a handsome young cab driver a whole ten francs and was furious at him. They came into the apartment arguing away about it. Marcel was contrite, but his father asked what good do his apologies do when he repeats the same acts over and over. Adrien was particularly alarmed that such tips leave the impression with servants
that there is more to it than just driving the cab or serving the meal, or whatever it is. I have spoken to Marcel about this before and he is always mortally offended at what he calls “my insinuations.” Anyway, their argument quite spoiled my pleasure at seeing Marcel out of doors again, after his recent attacks. Dick breezed through for tea and just laughed about the whole thing, and said, “With Marcel, what do you expect?” He finds a way somehow to remove himself from our cares and seems to regard his family increasingly as nothing more than light entertainment. But I am unfair, he is a devoted son. They both are.

Despite the
Figaro’s
evidence, everyone is saying that Esterhazy will be acquitted, so our joy seems to have been premature.

It is a brave thing M. Zola has done. It was all over the streets this morning and Jean could not avoid the news when he went out for the bread. He brought me the paper himself at breakfast, saying very discreetly, “I think Madame may be interested in this.” The headline is inflammatory—“I Accuse”—and the letter underneath even more so. He has openly accused the army of mistakenly convicting Dreyfus of espionage, forging documents to cover the mistake, and acquitting Esterhazy of the crime on government orders. Adrien was furious when he saw
L’Aurore
, demanded to know how it got into the house—I did not tell him that Jean has been sneaking it in occasionally since it seems we can no longer count on the
Figaro
for our Dreyfusard news.
Luckily, Adrien did not pursue the issue but announced the army should sue Zola for libel. “These people seem determined to undermine France,” he said, and went off to the faculty in a huff. Once he was gone, I woke Marcel, knowing this to be dramatic enough that he would want to know at once. He was hugely impressed by Zola’s act, and dressed hurriedly to get out to his friends to see what action was planned. In his haste he left with only one scarf, his outer one, but nothing inside his coat. It is an indication of how excited he is, since usually he bundles up so methodically. Dick was up and out before the rest of us this morning, but no doubt he heard the news in the street. It is out now, there will be no more whispering in the salons. Something must be done.