Marcel Proust_ A Life - Edmund White [43]
Especially since Agostinelli preferred adventure to wealth. He had been thrilled by the first automobiles, but now, on the eve of the coming war, he was drawn to aviation. Proust offered to pay for flying lessons in the Paris region (the Narrator accompanies the excited Albertine to all the flying fields around Paris). Proust made a substantial down payment for lessons in a school outside Paris, but then suddenly Agostinelli bolted.
In all, Agostinelli lived with Proust only from the beginning of 1913 to the morning of December 1, when he and Anna left without explanation while Proust slept. In fact he’d gone to Antibes, near his native Monaco. Why did he leave? To escape Proust’s constant jealous interrogations? Or because Anna disliked Paris? Sadly, ironically, Agostinelli registered at his new flight school under the pseudonym of “Marcel Swann.” Why did he even need a pseudonym? To avoid being located by the jealous monster (and his literary counterpart) that the compound fictional name invoked?
A devastated Proust asked his old secretary Albert Nahmias if he knew the address of a policeman who could “follow” someone—a private eye, in other words. Proust also wrote Agostinelli’s father, promising him a handsome monthly salary if he could convince his son to return to Paris—only till April (Proust apparently knew he could not expect too much even in the best of scenarios). Nahmias himself was dispatched to Antibes and instructed to offer Agostinelli money, threats, ultimatums, bribes. In a generous mood, Proust ordered Agostinelli an airplane (just as the Narrator tries to lure Albertine back by offering her a yacht). In a vindictive mood Proust wrote Agostinelli, “If ever ill fortune decrees that you have an airplane accident, you can make it clear to your wife that she will find in me neither a protector, nor a friend, nor a source of money.”
Proust’s novel Swann’s Way was published in November 1913, but his year of suffering with Agostinelli and—after December 1 and the young man’s departure—his even greater agony of living without him meant that he took no pleasure at all in the long-awaited artistic event, even if the book received much praise, including a letter from the writer Francis Jammes comparing Proust to Shakespeare, Balzac, and Tacitus. When Proust, confounding literature and his miserable life, received a mixed review a few days after Agostinelli’s flight, he wrote Cocteau, “I’ve seen my novel reflected in it as in a mirror counselling suicide.” To an unknown fan, Proust wrote, “Right now I’m living through the most painful moment of my life after the death of my mother. And the pleasure that you are good enough to say my book has brought you, it does not at all procure for me.” In the early spring, however, Agostinelli began to drop occasional notes to Proust; perhaps he feared that his money might someday run out. Being back in touch with his beloved, no matter what Agostinelli’s motives were, overjoyed Proust.
And then suddenly the world came to an end. On May 30, 1914, after two months of lessons, Agostinelli went out on his second solo flight. Against his teacher’s advice he flew out over the Mediterranean and then, while making a low-altitude turn, crashed into the water. He couldn’t swim. He waved frantically while clinging to the wreckage, then sank with it and drowned. A great deal of money was found on his body, which he kept with him all the time since he couldn’t trust his greedy family members not to steal it.
Proust was devastated. He wrote Reynaldo Hahn, “I truly loved Alfred. It’s not enough to say I loved him,