• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1415 0

Paris brought miraculously close to me, there beside my bookcase, I suddenly heard, mechanical and sublime, like the fluttering scarf or the shepherd’s pipe in Tristan, the top-like whirr of the telephone. I sprang to the instrument; it was Albertine. “I’m not disturbing you, ringing you up at this hour?” “Not at all . . .” I said, restraining my joy, for her remark about the lateness of the hour was doubtless meant as an apology for coming round in a moment, so late, and not that she was not coming. “Are you coming round?” I asked in a tone of indifference. “Well . . . no, unless you absolutely must see me.”

Part of me, which the other part sought to join, was in Albertine. It was essential that she should come, but I did not tell her so at first; now that we were in communication, I said to myself that I could always oblige her at the last moment either to come to me or to let me rush round to her. “Yes, I’m near home,” she said, “and miles away from you. I hadn’t read your note properly. I’ve just found it again and was afraid you might be waiting up for me.” I felt sure she was lying, and now, in my fury, it was from a desire not so much to see her as to inconvenience her that I was determined to make her come. But I felt it better to refuse at first what in a few moments I should try to procure. But where was she? With the sound of her voice were blended other sounds: a cyclist’s horn, a woman’s voice singing, a brass band in the distance, rang out as distinctly as the beloved voice, as though to show me that it was indeed Albertine in her actual surroundings who was beside me at that moment, like a clod of earth together with which we have carried away all the grass that was growing from it. The same sounds that I heard were striking her ear also, and were distracting her attention: true-to-life details, extraneous to the subject, valueless in themselves, all the more necessary to our perception of the miracle for what it was; simple, charming features descriptive of some Parisian street, bitter, cruel features, too, of some unknown festivity which, after she had come away from Phèdre, had prevented Albertine from coming to me. “I must warn you first of all that it’s not that I wanted you to come, because, at this time of night, it would be a frightful nuisance . . .” I said to her. “I’m dropping with sleep. And besides, well, there are endless complications. I’m bound to say that there was no possibility of your misunderstanding my letter. You answered that it was all right. Well then, if you hadn’t understood, what did you mean by that?” “I said it was all right, only I couldn’t quite remember what we had arranged. But I see you’re cross with me, I’m sorry. I wish now I’d never gone to Phèdre. If I’d known there was going to be all this fuss about it . . .” she went on, as people invariably do when, being in the wrong over one thing, they pretend to believe that they are being blamed for another. “I’m not in the least annoyed about Phèdre, seeing it was I who asked you to go to it.” “Then you are angry with me; it’s a nuisance it’s so late now, otherwise I should have come round, but I shall call tomorrow or the day after and make it up.” “Oh, please don’t, Albertine, I beg of you; after making me waste an entire evening, the least you can do is to leave me in peace for the next few days. I shan’t be free for a fortnight or three weeks. Listen, if it worries you to think that we seem to be parting in anger—and perhaps you’re right, after all—then I’d much prefer, all things considered, since I’ve been waiting for you all this time and you’re still out, that you should come at once. I’ll have a cup of coffee to keep myself awake.” “Couldn’t you possibly put it off till tomorrow? Because the trouble is . . .” As I listened to these words of excuse, uttered as though she did not intend to come, I felt that, with the longing to see again the velvet-soft face which in the past, at Balbec, used to direct all my days towards the moment when, by the mauve September sea, I should be beside that roseate flower, a very different