In Search of Lost Time, Volume V_ The Captive, the Fugitive - Marcel Proust [196]
She appeared stunned, incredulous and desolate: “Tomorrow? You really mean it?”
And in spite of the anguish that I felt in speaking of our parting as though it were already in the past—partly perhaps because of that very anguish—I began to give Albertine the most precise instructions as to certain things which she would have to do after she left the house. And passing from one request to another, I soon found myself entering into the minutest details.
“Be so kind,” I said with infinite sadness, “as to send me back that book of Bergotte’s which is at your aunt’s. There’s no hurry about it, in three days, in a week, whenever you like, but remember that I don’t want to have to write and ask you for it: that would be too painful. We have been happy together, but now we feel that we should be unhappy.”
“Don’t say that we feel that we’d be unhappy,” Albertine interrupted me, “don’t say ‘we,’ it’s only you who feel that.”
“Yes, very well, you or I, as you like, for one reason or another. But it’s absurdly late, you must go to bed—we’ve decided to part tonight.”
“Excuse me, you’ve decided, and I obey you because I don’t want to upset you.”
“Very well, it’s I who have decided, but that doesn’t make it any less painful for me. I don’t say that it will be painful for long, you know that I’m not capable of remembering things for long, but for the first few days I shall be so miserable without you. And so I feel that it’s no use stirring up the memory with letters, we must end everything at once.”
“Yes, you’re right,” she said to me with a crushed air, which was enhanced by the signs of fatigue on her features due to the lateness of the hour, “rather than have one finger chopped off and then another, I prefer to lay my head on the block at once.”
“Heavens, I’m appalled when I think how late I’m keeping you out of bed, it’s madness. However, it’s the last night! You’ll have plenty of time to sleep for the rest of your life.”
And thus while telling her that it was time to say good-night I sought to postpone the moment when she would have said it: “Would you like me, in order to take your mind off things during the first few days, to ask Bloch to send his cousin Esther to the place where you’ll be staying? He’ll do that for me.”
“I don’t know why you say that” (I had said it in an attempt to wrest a confession from Albertine), “there’s only one person I care about, and that’s you,” Albertine said to me, and her words were infinitely sweet to me. But, the next moment, what a blow she dealt me! “I remember, of course, that I did give this Esther my photograph because she kept on asking me for it and I saw that it would give her pleasure, but as for having any great liking for her or wanting to see her again, never!” And yet Albertine was of so frivolous a nature that she went on: “If she wants to see me, it’s all the same to me. She’s very nice, but I don’t care in the least either way.”
Thus, when I had spoken to her of the photograph of Esther which Bloch had sent me (and which I had not even received when I mentioned it to her) Albertine had gathered that Bloch had shown me a photograph of herself which she had given to Esther. In my worst suppositions, I had never imagined that any such intimacy could have existed between Albertine and Esther. Albertine had been at a loss for words when I mentioned the photograph. And now, wrongly, supposing me to be in the know, she thought it advisable to confess. I was shattered.
“And, Albertine, let me ask you to do me one more favour: never attempt to see me again. If at any time, as may happen in a year, in two years, in three years, we should find ourselves in the same town, avoid me.” And seeing that she did not answer my request in the affirmative, I went on: “My Albertine, don’t do it, don’t ever see me again in this life. It would hurt me too much. For I was really fond of you, you know. Of course, when I told you