Proust's Overcoat - Lorenza Foschini [19]
In his preface to Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, Proust spoke about his bedroom:
I leave it to men and women of taste to furnish their rooms as a reflection of their taste, filling it only with things that suit them. For me, I can only live and think in rooms where everything is the creation, the language of lives profoundly different from mine, of a taste contrary to my own, where I find nothing of my own conscious thoughts, where my imagination is thrilled to plunge into the heart of the not-me.
The outcome of this “agent of destiny” adventure, far from appeasing Guérin, only served to excite him more. The idea that there were still things to be reclaimed left him no peace. He was obsessed by the idea that his role as savior was not yet finished. At this point in time, according to what Guérin told Piero Tosi, he began to scour obituary listings in Le Figaro and to attend the funerals of Proust’s friends in search of more confidences, more souvenirs.
Through it all, Guérin continued to see Werner regularly. On his way home from work, Guérin would swing by Werner’s storage shed and invite him home for a drink and a bit of chat. Each time they met, he would pummel the man with refreshed vigor, always in an urgent manner, shaking him violently on occasion to get him to confess to yet one more secret sacrilege, to admit that there was still something else to be had. Guérin could lose his temper, becoming almost brutal with his incessant barrage of questions. Werner categorically denied possessing anything else but, with his instinctual sadism, let it be known that it was quite possible several things might yet have escaped Guérin’s evangelical mission. This left Guérin panting for more.
Then, one evening, moving toward the door as he was about to take leave of Guérin, Werner, as if tired of concealing a minor larceny, let slip that he did have something else of Proust’s that he had kept concealed from Guérin. He claimed no little embarrassment. It had to do with his love of fishing and his ritual Sunday outings on the Marne, where he kept a small boat. Marthe, hearing about these fishing trips, told him he was crazy, that he would catch his death of cold out on the river in the middle of winter. Worried about his well-being, she presented him with an old coat of Marcel’s for him to wear. Ever since, whenever he went out in his boat, he would wrap this coat around his legs and cover his feet. After all this time, Werner felt the need to unburden himself about possessing the coat and having kept it a secret from him.
Guérin was stunned. He immediately began to plead, almost hysterically, for Werner to bring him the coat, regardless of its condition or however filthy or damaged it was.
Werner, though by now long familiar with his client’s peculiarities, still failed to understand the extravagance of this particular request. What possible value could there be in an old, worn-out coat, one in such a deplorable state? Such a thought made him redden with shame. He attempted to disabuse Guérin of the idea.
He was not sufficiently persuasive. In the face of Guérin’s insistence, he wound up bringing the old coat to him. He wouldn’t take a cent for it.
If I try to imagine Proust, I close my eyes and see him covered in his dark coat, as he was so often described by those who knew him. Reading In Search of Lost Time, I can only visualize the Narrator swaddled in his otter-lined overcoat.
One night in 1901, at Chez Larue, the exclusive restaurant on place de la Madeleine, Proust complained