Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [17]
But as soon as I saw them again in the house where these women were putting them to their own uses, all the virtues that I had once inhaled in my aunt’s bedroom at Combray came back to me, being defenselessly tortured by the cruel contact to which I had abandoned them! Had I violated the memory of the dead, I would not have suffered such remorse. I never went back to this madam’s house, because those pieces of furniture seemed to me to be alive and beckoning me, like those supposedly inanimate objects from a Persian fairy tale, in which imprisoned souls, subjected to martyrdom, implore you to free them
This second reference to souls trapped in inanimate objects highlights Proust’s fascination with the concepts of captivity and resurrection. According to the Italian scholar Mariolina Bongiovanni Bertini, the Narrator’s fears come “to signify not the hope of resurrection, but rather the terror and anguish of an indefinite survival deprived of redemption.”
Over a period of several months, Guérin continued to see Werner. He soon realized that the young man’s relationship with Marthe was more complex than Guérin had originally imagined. Marthe clearly trusted Werner and had come to rely on him as a confidant; Guérin realized that Werner wore many hats. He would invite Werner to his house for a glass of port but then would proceed to subject him to interrogation, always wanting to know about the possibility of there being still more papers, more things. Jacques Guérin was a highly cultivated and refined man, capable of expressing extreme sensitivity and delicacy, yet he could also be mordant and caustic and act in a superior, authoritarian manner. While he may have yielded to Werner’s insidious hold over him, he was never weak.
One night Werner finally gave in to Guérin’s ceaseless prodding and revealed that after Marcel died, most of the vast, jumbled hoard of things that came from his rue Hamelin apartment were immediately relegated to storage in the attic of Robert Proust’s avenue Hoche home. Twelve years later, when the doctor died and Marthe wanted to be rid of all of Marcel’s things, she simply gave everything to Werner. He took possession of the entire inventory and removed it to his private storage space. Having known Guérin now for some time, Werner finally invited him to come and have a look, to see if there would be anything else of interest to him.
Much to his surprise, Guérin learned that Werner’s stash wasn’t at all far from his business, a very short drive from his factory along the river road. Up ahead, a wooden structure came into view that Guérin had driven past for years: amazingly, this was Werner’s warehouse. He was incredulous when he realized that so short a distance separated his own workplace from Werner’s; so short a distance between him and, as it turned out, even more of Marcel Proust’s tangible remains.
At Werner’s storage shed, Guérin was completely overwhelmed by what surrounded him. He found a sidewalk covered with all kinds of merchandise: mirrors, toilets, old utensils, prices scrawled in chalk. Looking carefully among all the knickknacks spread out on display, Guérin’s beautiful blue eyes widened; there on the ground he saw, encased in a vulgar, ornate frame, a portrait of Dr. Adrien Proust. The broad face, with its gray beard and reproachful expression, seemed to plead with Guérin to get him out of the mire into which he had been thrown. When speaking of this amazing find years later, Guérin