In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [231]
On certain evenings she would suddenly resume towards him an amenity of which she would warn him sternly that he must take immediate advantage, under penalty of not seeing it repeated for years to come; he must instantly accompany her home, to “do a cattleya,” and the desire which she claimed to have for him was so sudden, so inexplicable, so imperious, the caresses which she lavished on him were so demonstrative and so unwonted, that this brutal and improbable fondness made Swann just as unhappy as any lie or unkindness. One evening when he had thus, in obedience to her command, gone home with her, and she was interspersing her kisses with passionate words, in strange contrast to her habitual coldness, he suddenly thought he heard a sound; he rose, searched everywhere and found nobody, but hadn’t the heart to return to his place by her side; whereupon, in the height of fury, she broke a vase and said to him: “One can never do anything right with you!” And he was left uncertain whether she had not actually had some man concealed in the room, whose jealousy she had wished to exacerbate or his senses to inflame.
Sometimes he repaired to brothels in the hope of learning something about Odette, although he dared not mention her name. “I have a little thing you’re sure to like,” the bawd would greet him, and he would stay for an hour or so chatting gloomily to some poor girl who sat there astonished that he went no further. One of them, who was quite young and very pretty, said to him once: “Of course, what I’d like would be to find a real friend—then he might be quite certain I’d never go with any other men again.”
“Really, do you think it possible for a woman to be touched by a man’s loving her, and never to be unfaithful to him?” asked Swann anxiously.
“Why, of course! It all depends on people’s characters!”
Swann could not help saying to these girls the sort of things that would have delighted the Princesse des Laumes. To the one who was in search of a friend he said with a smile: “But how nice, you’ve put on blue eyes to go with your sash.”
“And you too, you’ve got blue cuffs on.”
“What a charming conversation we’re having for a place of this sort! I’m not boring you, am I; or keeping you?”
“No, I’m not in a hurry. If you’d have bored me I’d have said so. But I like hearing you talk.”
“I’m very flattered … Aren’t we having a nice chat?” he asked the bawd who had just looked in.
“Why, yes, that’s just what I was saying to myself, how good they’re being! But there it is! People come to my house now just to talk. The Prince was telling me only the other day that it’s far nicer here than at home with his wife. It seems that, nowadays, all the society ladies are so flighty; a real scandal, I call it. But I’ll leave you in peace now,” she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the girl who had the blue eyes. But presently he rose and said good-bye to her. She had ceased to interest him. She did not know Odette.
The painter having been ill, Dr Cottard recommended a sea-voyage. Several of the “faithful” spoke of accompanying him. The Verdurins could not face the prospect of being left alone in Paris, so first of all hired and finally purchased a yacht; thus Odette went on frequent cruises. Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann would feel that he was beginning to detach himself from her, but as though this moral distance were proportionate to the physical distance between them, whenever he heard that Odette had returned to Paris, he could not rest without seeing her. Once, when they had gone away ostensibly for a month only, either they succumbed to a series of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged everything beforehand to please his wife, and disclosed his plans to the “faithful” only as time went on; at all events, from Algiers they flitted to Tunis; then to Italy, Greece, Constantinople, Asia Minor. They had been absent for nearly a