Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [10]
A funereal mood hung over this atmosphere of disarray. The apartment was plundered, devastated. Guérin felt he was bearing witness to the end of an era. Strangely, the furniture seemed to be appealing to him for help. In Swann’s Way the Narrator explains
the Celtic belief that the souls of those we have lost are held captive in some lesser being, in an animal, a vegetable, an inanimate object, in effect lost to us until the day, which for some of us never comes, when we find ourselves walking near a tree and it dawns on us that this object is their prison. The souls shudder, they call out to us; and as soon as we have heard them, the spell is broken. Liberated by us, they triumph over death, and come to live among us once again.
Guérin asked Werner, who was just going out to arrange transport for his purchases, about the books stacked up in the entryway. The young man told him that they were books that had belonged to Marcel Proust. Mme Proust, the doctor’s wife, had systematically ripped out whatever dedications in them she could find because she hadn’t wanted Marcel’s name to endure.
At that moment Guérin had the impression of being somehow singled out to make amends, to intervene in an act of salvation, to make reparations for injustices committed. He experienced this powerfully, as an obligation, one he could not ignore.
Werner went out on his errand. Left alone, Guérin paced through the many rooms of the apartment. On a mantelpiece, two books caught his eye: Blue Hydrangeas and The Bats, both by Robert de Montesquiou. One after the other he opened them. Each held an incredibly long, adulatory message from its author to Marcel Proust. Guérin now knew these inscriptions were fugitives, having escaped the devastating fury of Mme Robert Proust.
When Werner returned with help, the desk and bookcase were packed and moved out. Returning once more to his car, again with Werner beside him, Guérin drove toward his own house, followed behind by the moving van. Thinking back over the course of a long, strange day, he must have wondered about the chain of events that led him here, driving home with this improbable young man at his side.
The faculty of reason is incapable of helping us understand why we do what we do. “Our intelligence is not the most subtle of instruments, the strongest, or the most appropriate for grasping the truth,” Proust wrote in The Fugitive, and that
is only one more reason to start with the intelligence and not with unconscious intuitions or a predetermined faith in presentiment. It is only very slowly, case by case, that life allows us to realize what is most important to our hearts, to our spirits, and that we do not learn by reasoning but by other powers. The intelligence itself ultimately acknowledges the superiority of these powers and abdicates reasoning to them, accepting its role as collaborator and servant.
Guérin drove to the quiet corner of Paris where he lived. Rue Berton was situated in a secluded, bucolic spot, where occasional vestiges of countryside still remained. His was the only house on the block. An old tarred roadway led beyond his house to what once had been Balzac’s house, then branched off into a vast park, the Eaux de Passy, where, long ago, Marie Antoinette had come to bathe. In the years to come, this charming enclave would succumb to much development. The road leading there would one day be named avenue Marcel Proust, but that happened much later, beyond the realm of even Guérin’s imagination.
The van was unloaded. His new acquisitions safely in the house, Guérin invited Werner to sit with him by the fire. The day had been highly emotional, but still he felt unsatisfied, unfulfilled. He wanted to know more about this abandoned furniture. Guérin