In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV_ Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust [112]
as Endymion, with incredibly perfect features, who was bringing a message to a lady whom I did not know. When the lift-boy returned, in telling him how impatiently I had waited for the message, I mentioned to him that I had thought I heard him come upstairs but that it had turned out to be a page from the Hôtel de Normandie. “Oh, yes, I know,” he said, “they have only the one, a fellow about my build. He’s so like me in face, too, that we could easily be mistaken for one another; anybody would think he was my brother.” Lastly, he always wanted to appear to have understood you perfectly from the first second, which meant that as soon as you asked him to do anything he would say: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand all that,” with a precision and a tone of intelligence which for some time deceived me; but other people, as we get to know them, are like a metal dipped in an acid bath, and we see them gradually lose their qualities (and their defects too, at times). Before giving him my instructions, I saw that he had left the door open; I pointed this out to him, for I was afraid that people might hear us; he acceded to my request and returned, having reduced the gap. “Anything to oblige. But there’s nobody on this floor except us two.” Immediately I heard one, then a second, then a third person go by. This annoyed me partly because of the risk of my being overheard, but mainly because I could see that it did not in the least surprise him and was a perfectly normal coming and going. “Yes, that’ll be the maid next door going for her things. Oh, that’s of no importance, it’s the wine waiter putting away his keys. No, no, it’s nothing, you can say what you want, it’s my colleague just going on duty.” Then, as the reasons that all these people had for passing did not diminish my dislike of the thought that they might overhear me, at a formal order from me he went, not to shut the door, which was beyond the strength of this cyclist who longed for a “motor-bike,” but to push it a little closer to. “Now we’ll be nice and peaceful.” So peaceful were we that an American lady burst in and withdrew with apologies for having mistaken the number of her room. “You are to bring this young lady back with you,” I told him, after banging the door shut with all my might (which brought in another page to see whether a window had been left open). “You remember the name: Mlle Albertine Simonet. Anyhow it’s on the envelope. You need only say to her that it’s from me. She will be delighted to come,” I added, to encourage him and preserve my own self-esteem. “I should think so!” “On the contrary, it isn’t at all natural to suppose that she should be glad to come. It’s very inconvenient getting here from Berneville.” “Don’t I know it!” “You will tell her to come with you.” “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand perfectly,” he replied, in that shrewd and precise tone which had long ceased to make a “good impression” upon me because I knew that it was almost mechanical and covered with its apparent clearness a great deal of vagueness and stupidity. “When will you be back?” “Shan’t take too long,” said the lift-boy, who, carrying to extremes the grammatical rule that forbids the repetition of personal pronouns before co-ordinate verbs, omitted the pronoun altogether. “Should be able to go all right. Actually, leave was stopped this afternoon, because there was a dinner for twenty at lunch-time. And it was my turn off duty today. Should be all right if I go out a bit this evening, though. Take my bike with me. Get there in no time.” And an hour later he reappeared and said: “Monsieur’s had to wait, but the young lady’s come with me. She’s down below.” “Oh, thanks very much; the porter won’t be cross with me?” “Monsieur Paul? Doesn’t even know where I’ve been. Even the head doorman didn’t say a word.” But once, after I had told him: “You absolutely must bring her back with you,” he reported to me with a smile: “You know I couldn’t find her. She’s not there. Couldn’t wait any longer because I was afraid of copping it like my colleague who was ‘missed from the hotel