The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust (6 page)

He felt strong and free, proud to see that his own life was not as precious to him
as his sister-in-law’s, and that he felt as much scorn for his own life as pity for
hers. He now looked death in the face and no longer beheld the scenes that would surround
his death. He wanted to remain like that until the end, no longer prey to his lies,
which, by trying to bring him a beautiful and wonderful agony, would have added the
last straw to his profanations by soiling the mysteries of his death just as it had
concealed from him the mysteries of his life.

Baldassare’s emotions and fatigue during his sister-in-law’s illness had stepped up
the advance of his own disease. He had just been told by his confessor that he had
only one month left; it was ten
A.M
., the rain was coming down in torrents. A carriage halted in front of the castle.
It was Duchess Oliviane. Earlier, when harmoniously adorning the scenes of his death,
he had told himself:

“It will be on a clear evening. The sun will be down, and the sea, glimpsed through
the apple trees, will be mauve. As airy as pale and faded wreaths and as persistent
as regrets, blue and rosy cloudlets will drift along the horizon. . . .”

It was at ten
A.M
., in a downpour, under a foul and low-lying sky, that Duchess Oliviane arrived; exhausted
by his illness, fully absorbed in higher interests, and no longer feeling the grace
of things that he had once prized as the charm, the value, and the refined glory of
life, Baldassare had his servant tell the duchess that he was too weak. She insisted,
but he would not receive her. He was not even acting out of necessity: she meant nothing
to him anymore. Death had rapidly broken the bonds whose enslavement he had been dreading
for several weeks. When he tried to think of Oliviane, nothing
presented itself to his mind’s eye: the eyes of his imagination and of his vanity
had closed.

Yet roughly a week before his death, his furious jealousy was aroused by the announcement
that the Duchess of Bohemia was giving a ball, at which Pia was to lead the cotillion
with Castruccio, who was leaving for Denmark the next day. The viscount demanded to
see Pia; his sister-in-law was reluctant to summon her; he believed that they were
preventing him from seeing her, that they were persecuting him; he lost his temper,
so, to avoid tormenting him, they sent for her immediately.

By the time she arrived, he was perfectly calm, but profoundly sad. He drew her close
to his bed and instantly spoke about the ball being hosted by the Duchess of Bohemia.
He said:

“We’re not related, so you won’t wear mourning for me, but I have to ask you one favor:
Do not go to the ball, promise me you won’t.”

They locked gazes, showing their souls on the edge of their pupils, their melancholy
and passionate souls, which death was unable to unite.

He understood her hesitation; his lips twisting in pain, he gently murmured:

“Oh, don’t promise me, after all! Don’t break a promise made to a dying man. If you’re
not certain of yourself, don’t promise me anything.”

“I can’t promise you that; I haven’t seen him in two months and I may never see him
again; if I miss the ball, I’ll be inconsolable for all eternity.”

“You’re right, since you love him, and since death may come. . . . And since you’re
still alive with all your strength. . . . But you can do a small something for me;
to throw people off the scent, you’d be obliged to spend a bit of time with me at
the ball; subtract that time from your evening. Invite my soul to remember a few moments
with you, think of me a little.”

“I can scarcely promise you even that much, the ball will be so brief. Even if I don’t
leave, I’ll barely have time to see him. But I’ll give you a moment every day after
that.”

“You won’t manage, you’ll forget me; but if after a year, alas, more perhaps, a sad
text, a death, or a rainy evening reminds you of me, you can offer me some altruism!
I will never, never be able see you again . . . except in my soul, and this would
require that we think about each other simultaneously. I’ll think about you forever
so that my soul remains open to you endlessly in case you feel like entering it. But
the visitor will keep me waiting for a long time! The November rains will have rotted
the flowers on my grave, June will have burned them, and my soul will always be weeping
impatiently. Ah! I hope that someday the sight of a keepsake, the recurrence of a
birthday, the bent of your thoughts will guide your memory within the circle of my
tenderness. It will then be as if I’ve heard you, perceived you, a magic spell will
cover everything with flowers for your arrival. Think about the dead man. But, alas!
Can I hope that death and your gravity will accomplish what life with its ardors,
and our tears, and our merry times, and our lips were unable to achieve?”

Meanwhile a violent fever accompanied by delirium never left the viscount; his bed
had been moved to the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday,
seen him still so joyful: here the sick man could watch the sea, the pier, and, on
the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he began to speak; but his
words showed no traces of the thoughts from on high which, during the past few weeks,
had purified him with their visits. Savagely cursing an invisible person who was teasing
him, he kept repeating that
he was the premier musician of the century and the most illustrious aristocrat in
the universe. Then, suddenly calm, he told his coachmen to drive him to some low den,
to have the horses saddled for the hunt. He asked for stationery in order to invite
all the European sovereigns to a dinner celebrating his marriage to the sister of
the Duke of Parma; horrified at being unable to pay a gambling debt, he picked up
the paper knife next to his bed and aimed it like a gun. He dispatched messengers
to find out whether the policeman he had thrashed last night was dead, and he laughingly
muttered obscenities to someone whose hand he thought he was holding. Those exterminating
angels known as Will and Thought were no longer present to drive the evil spirits
of his senses and the vile emanations of his memory back into the darkness.

Three days later, around five o’clock, he woke up as if from a bad dream for which
the dreamer is responsible yet which he barely remembers. He asked whether any friends
or relatives had been here during the hours when he had presented an image of only
his lowliest, most archaic, and most extinct part; and he told his servants that if
he became delirious, they should have his visitors leave instantly and they should
not readmit them until he regained consciousness.

He raised his eyes, surveyed the room, and smiled at his black cat, who, perched on
a Chinese vase, was playing with a chrysanthemum and inhaling its fragrance with a
mime-like gesture. He sent everyone away and conversed at length with the priest who
was keeping watch over him. Yet he refused to take communion and asked the physician
to say that the patient’s stomach was in no condition to tolerate a host. An hour
later he had the servant bring in his sister-in-law and Jean Galeas. He said:

“I’m resigned, I’m happy to die and to come before God.”

The air was so mild that they opened the windows facing the ocean but not seeing it,
and because the wind blowing from the opposite direction was too brisk, they did not
open the windows giving upon the pastures and the woods.

Baldassare had them drag his bed near the open windows. A boat was just nosing out
to sea, guided by sailors towing the lines on the pier. A handsome cabin boy of about
fifteen was leaning over the bow; each billow seemed about to knock him into the water,
but he stood firm on his solid legs. With a burning pipe between his wind-salted lips,
he spread his net to haul in fish. And the same wind that bellied the sail blew into
the rotunda, cooling Baldassare’s cheeks and making a piece of paper flutter through
the room. He turned his head to avoid seeing the happy tableau of pleasures that he
had passionately loved and that he would never enjoy again. He eyed the harbor: a
three-master was setting sail.

“It’s the ship that’s bound for the Indies,” said Jean Galeas.

Baldassare was unable to distinguish the people waving their handkerchiefs on the
pier, but he sensed their thirst for the unknown, a thirst that was parching their
eyes; those people still had a great deal to experience, to get to know, to feel.
The anchor was weighed, shouts arose, the ship cut across the dark sea, toward the
west, where, in a golden mist, the light blended the skiffs with the clouds, murmuring
hazy and irresistible promises to the voyagers.

Baldassare had the servants shut the windows on this side of the rotunda and open
the ones facing the pastures and the woods. He gazed at the fields, but he could still
hear the farewells shouted from the three-master and he could see the cabin boy holding
his pipe between his teeth and spreading his nets.

Baldassare’s hand stirred feverishly. All at once he heard a faint, silvery tinkle
as deep and indistinct as the beating of a heart. It was the bells pealing in an extremely
distant village, a sound that, thanks to the limpid evening air and the favorable
breeze, had traveled across many miles of plains and rivers to be picked up by his
infallible ear. It was both a current and ancient voice; now he heard his heart beating
to the harmonious flight of the bells, the sound pausing the moment they seemed to
inhale it, then exhaling with them in a long and feeble breath. Throughout his life,
upon hearing faraway
bells, he had spontaneously remembered their sweetness in the evening air when, as
a little boy, he had crossed the fields on his way home to the castle.

At that instant the physician beckoned everyone over, saying: “It’s the end!”

Baldassare was resting, his eyes closed, and his heart was listening to the bells,
which his ear, paralyzed by imminent death, could not catch. He saw his mother kissing
him upon his return, then putting him to bed at night, rubbing his feet to warm them,
remaining with him if he could not fall asleep; he recalled his
Robinson Crusoe
and the evenings in the garden when his sister would sing; he recalled the words
of his tutor, who predicted that someday he would be a great musician, and he recalled
his mother’s thrilled reaction, which she tried but failed to conceal. Now there was
no time left to realize the passionate expectations of his mother and his sister,
whom he had so cruelly disappointed. He saw the large linden tree under which he had
gotten engaged and he saw the day on which his engagement had been broken, and only
his mother had managed to console him. He believed he was kissing his old nanny and
holding his first violin. He saw all these things in a luminous remoteness as sweet
and sad as the one that the windows facing the fields were watching but not seeing.

He saw all these things, and yet not even two seconds had passed since the physician
had listened to his heart and said:

“It’s the end!”

The physician stood up, saying:

“It’s over!”

Alexis, his mother, and Jean Galeas knelt down together with the Duke of Parma, who
had just arrived. The servants were weeping in the open doorway.