In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (54 page)

He began walking up and down the room, looking at one thing, taking up
another. I had the impression that he had something to tell me, and
could not find the right words to express it.

"I have another volume of Bergotte here; I will fetch it for you," he
went on, and rang the bell. Presently a page came. "Go and find me
your head waiter. He is the only person here who is capable of obeying
an order intelligently," said M. de Charlus stiffly. "Monsieur Aimé,
sir?" asked the page. "I cannot tell you his name; yes, I remember
now, I did hear him called Aimé. Run along, I am in a hurry." "He
won't be a minute, sir, I saw him downstairs just now," said the page,
anxious to appear efficient. There was an interval of silence. The
page returned. "Sir, M. Aimé has gone to bed. But I can take your
message." "No, you have only to get him out of bed." "But I can't do
that, sir; he doesn't sleep here." "Then you can leave us alone."
"But, sir," I said when the page had gone, "you are too kind; one
volume of Bergotte will be quite enough." "That is just what I was
thinking." M. de Charlus walked up and down the room. Several minutes
passed in this way, then after a prolonged hesitation, and several
false starts, he swung sharply round and, his voice once more
stinging, flung at me: "Good night, sir!" and left the room. After all
the lofty sentiments which I had heard him express that evening, next
day, which was the day of his departure, on the beach, before noon,
when I was on my way down to bathe, and M. de Charlus had come across
to tell me that my grandmother was waiting for me to join her as soon
as I left the water, I was greatly surprised to hear him say, pinching
my neck as he spoke, with a familiarity and a laugh that were frankly
vulgar:

"But he doesn't give a damn for his old grandmother, does he, eh?
Little rascal!"

"What, sir! I adore her!"

"Sir," he said, stepping back a pace, and with a glacial air, "you are
still young; you should profit by your youth to learn two things;
first, to refrain from expressing sentiments that are too natural not
to be taken for granted; and secondly not to dash into speech to reply
to things that are said to you before you have penetrated their
meaning. If you had taken this precaution a moment ago you would have
saved yourself the appearance of speaking at cross–purposes like a
deaf man, thereby adding a second absurdity to that of having anchors
embroidered on your bathing–dress. I have lent you a book by Bergotte
which I require. See that it is brought to me within the next hour by
that head waiter with the silly and inappropriate name, who, I
suppose, is not in bed at this time of day. You make me see that I was
premature in speaking to you last night of the charms of youth; I
should have done you a better service had I pointed out to you its
thoughtlessness, its inconsequence, and its want of comprehension. I
hope, sir, that this little douche will be no less salutary to you
than your bathe. But don't let me keep you standing: you may catch
cold. Good day, sir."

No doubt he was sorry afterwards for this speech, for some time later
I received—in a morocco binding on the front of which was inlaid a
panel of tooled leather representing in demi–relief a spray of
forget–me–nots—the book which he had lent me, and I had sent back to
him, not by Aimé who was apparently 'off duty,' but by the lift–boy.

M. de Charlus having gone, Robert and I were free at last to dine with
Bloch. And I realised during this little party that the stories too
readily admitted by our friend as funny were favourite stories of M.
Bloch senior, and that the son's 'really remarkable person' was always
one of his father's friends whom he had so classified. There are a
certain number of people whom we admire in our boyhood, a father with
better brains than the rest of the family, a teacher who acquires
credit in our eyes from the philosophy he reveals to us, a
schoolfellow more advanced than we are (which was what Bloch had been
to me), who despises the Musset of the
Espoir en Dieu
when we still
admire it, and when we have reached Leconte or Claudel will be in
ecstasies only over:

with which he will include:

and of all the
Nuits
will remember only:

So, whenever we confidently admire anyone, we collect from him, we
quote with admiration sayings vastly inferior to the sort which, left
to our own judgment, we would sternly reject, just as the writer of a
novel puts into it, on the pretext that they are true, things which
people have actually said, which in the living context are like a dead
weight, form the dull part of the work. Saint–Simon's portraits
composed by himself (and very likely without his admiring them
himself) are admirable, whereas what he cites as the charming wit of
his clever friends is frankly dull where it has not become
meaningless. He would have scorned to invent what he reports as so
pointed or so coloured when said by Mme. Cornuel or Louis XIV, a point
which is to be remarked also in many other writers, and is capable of
various interpretations, of which it is enough to note but one for the
present: namely, that in the state of mind in which we 'observe' we
are a long way below the level to which we rise when we create.

There was, then, embedded in my friend Bloch a father Bloch who lagged
forty years behind his son, told impossible stories and laughed as
loudly at them from the heart of my friend as did' the separate,
visible and authentic father Bloch, since to the laugh which the
latter emitted, not without several times repeating the last word so
that his public might taste the full flavour of the story, was added
the braying laugh with which the son never failed, at table, to greet
his father's anecdotes. Thus it came about that after saying the most
intelligent things young Bloch, to indicate the portion that he had
inherited from his family, would tell us for the thirtieth time some
of the gems which father Bloch brought out only (with his swallow–tail
coat) on the solemn occasions on which young Bloch brought someone to
the house on whom it was worth while making an impression; one of his
masters, a 'chum' who had taken all the prizes, or, this evening,
Saint–Loup and myself. For instance: "A military critic of great
insight, who had brilliantly worked out, supporting them with proofs,
the reasons for which, in the Russo–Japanese war, the Japanese must
inevitably be beaten and the Russians victorious," or else: "He is an
eminent gentleman who passes for a great financier in political
circles and for a great politician among financiers." These stories
were interchangeable with one about Baron de Rothschild and one about
Sir Rufus Israels, who were brought into the conversation in an
equivocal manner which might let it be supposed that M. Bloch knew
them personally.

I was myself taken in, and from the way in which M. Bloch spoke of
Bergotte I assumed that he too was an old friend. But with him as with
all famous people, M. Bloch knew them only 'without actually knowing
them,' from having seen them at a distance in the theatre or in the
street. He imagined, moreover, that his appearance, his name, his
personality were not unknown to them, and that when they caught sight
of him they had often to repress a stealthy inclination to bow. People
in society, because they know men of talent, original characters, and
have them to dine in their houses, do not on that account understand
them any better. But when one has lived to some extent in society, the
silliness of its inhabitants makes one too anxious to live, suppose
too high a standard of intelligence in the obscure circles in which
people know only 'without actually knowing.' I was to discover this
when I introduced the topic of Bergotte. M. Bloch was not the only
one who was a social success at home. My friend was even more so with
his sisters, whom he continually questioned in a hectoring tone,
burying his face in his plate, all of which made them laugh until they
cried. They had adopted their brother's language, and spoke it
fluently, as if it had been obligatory and the only form of speech
that people of intelligence might use. When we arrived, the eldest
sister said to one of the younger ones: "Go, tell our sage father and
our venerable mother!" "Puppies," said Bloch, "I present to you the
cavalier Saint–Loup, hurler of javelins, who is come for a few days
from Doncières to the dwellings of polished stone, fruitful in
horses." And, since he was as vulgar as he was literary, his speech
ended as a rule in some pleasantry of a less Homeric kind: "See, draw
closer your pepla with fair clasps, what is all that that I see? Does
your mother know you're out?" And the Misses Bloch subsided in a
tempest of laughter. I told their brother how much pleasure he had
given me by recommending me to read Bergotte, whose books I had loved.

M. Bloch senior, who knew Bergotte only by sight, and Bergotte's life
only from what was common gossip, had a manner quite as indirect of
making the acquaintance of his books, by the help of criticisms that
were apparently literary. He lived in the world of "very nearlies,"
where people salute the empty air and arrive at wrong judgments.
Inexactitude, incompetence do not modify their assurance; quite the
contrary. It is the propitious miracle of self–esteem that, since few
of us are in a position to enjoy the society of distinguished people,
or to form intellectual friendships, those to whom they are denied
still believe themselves to be the best endowed of men, because the
optics of our social perspective make every grade of society seem the
best to him who occupies it, and beholds as less favoured than
himself, less fortunate and therefore to be pitied, the greater men
whom he names and calumniates without knowing, judges and—despises
without understanding them. Even in cases where the multiplication of
his modest personal advantages by his self–esteem would not suffice to
assure a man the dose of happiness, superior to that accorded to
others, which is essential to him, envy is always there to make up the
balance. It is true that if envy finds expression in scornful phrases,
we must translate 'I have no wish to know him' by 'I have no means of
knowing him.' That is the intellectual sense. But the emotional sense
is indeed, 'I have no wish to know him.' The speaker knows that it is
not true, but he does not, all the same, say it simply to deceive; he
says it because it is what he feels, and that is sufficient to bridge
the gulf between them, that is to say to make him happy.

Self–centredness thus enabling every human being to see the universe
spread out in a descending scale beneath himself who is its lord, M.
Bloch afforded himself the luxury of being pitiless when in the
morning, as he drank his chocolate, seeing Bergotte's signature at the
foot of an article in the newspaper which he had scarcely opened, he
disdainfully granted the writer an audience soon cut short, pronounced
sentence upon him, and gave himself the comforting pleasure of
repeating after every mouthful of the scalding brew: "That fellow
Bergotte has become unreadable. My word, what a bore the creature can
be. I really must stop my subscription. How involved it all is, bread
and butter nonsense!" And he helped himself to another slice.

This illusory importance of M. Bloch senior did, moreover, extend some
little way beyond the radius of his own perceptions. In the first
place his children regarded him as a superior person. Children have
always a tendency either to depreciate or to exalt their parents, and
to a good son his father is always the best of fathers, quite apart
from any objective reason there may be for admiring him. Now, such
reasons were not altogether lacking in the case of M. Bloch, who was
an educated man, shrewd, affectionate towards his family. In his most
intimate circle they were all the more proud of him because, if,
in 'society,' people are judged by a standard (which is incidentally
absurd) and according to false but fixed rules, by comparison with the
aggregate of all the other fashionable people, in the subdivisions of
middle–class life, on the other hand, the dinners, the family parties
all turn upon certain people who are pronounced good company, amusing,
and who in 'society' would not survive a second evening. Moreover in
such an environment where the artificial values of the aristocracy do
not exist, their place is taken by distinctions even more stupid.
Thus it was that in his family circle, and even among the remotest
branches of the tree, an alleged similarity in his way of wearing his
moustache and in the bridge of his nose led to M. Bloch's being called
"the Duc d'Aumale's double." (In the world of club pages, the one who
wears his cap on one side and his jacket tightly buttoned, so as to
give himself the appearance, he imagines, of a foreign officer, is he
not also a personage of a sort to his comrades?)

The resemblance was the faintest, but you would have said that it
conferred a title. When he was mentioned, it would always be: "Bloch?
Which one? The Duc d'Aumale?" as people say "Princesse Murat? Which
one? The Queen (of Naples)?" And there were certain other minute marks
which combined to give him, in the eyes of the cousinhood, an
acknowledged claim to distinction. Not going the length of having a
carriage of his own, M. Bloch used on special occasions to hire an
open victoria with a pair of horses from the Company, and would drive
through the Bois de Boulogne, his body sprawling limply from side to
side, two fingers pressed to his brow, other two supporting his chin,
and if people who did not know him concluded that he was an 'old
nuisance,' they were all convinced, in the family, that for smartness
Uncle Solomon could have taught Gramont–Caderousse a thing or two. He
was one of those people who when they die, because for years they have
shared a table in a restaurant on the boulevard with its news–editor,
are described as "well known Paris figures" in the social column of
the
Radical
. M. Bloch told Saint–Loup and me that Bergotte knew so
well why he, M. Bloch, always cut him that as soon as he caught sight
of him, at the theatre or in the club, he avoided his eye. Saint–Loup
blushed, for it had occurred to him that this club could not be the
Jockey, of which his father had been chairman. On the other hand it
must be a fairly exclusive club, for M. Bloch had said that Bergotte
would never have got into it if he had come up now. So it was not
without the fear that he might be 'underrating his adversary' that
Saint–Loup asked whether the club in question were the Rue Royale,
which was considered 'lowering' by his own family, and to which he
knew that certain Israelites had been admitted. "No," replied M. Bloch
in a tone at once careless, proud and ashamed, "it is a small club,
but far more pleasant than a big one, the Ganaches. We're very strict
there, don't you know." "Isn't Sir Rufus Israels the chairman?" Bloch
junior asked his father, so as to give him the opportunity for a
glorious lie, never suspecting that the financier had not the same
eminence in Saint–Loup's eyes as in his. The fact of the matter was
that the Ganaches club boasted not Sir Rufus Israels but one of his
staff. But as this man was on the best of terms with his employer, he
had at his disposal a stock of the financier's cards, and would give
one to M. Bloch whenever he wished to travel on a line of which Sir
Rufus was a director, the result of which was that old Bloch would
say: "I'm just going round to the Club to ask Sir Rufus for a line to
the Company." And the card enabled him to dazzle the guards on the
trains. The Misses Bloch were more interested in Bergotte and,
reverting to him rather than pursue the subject of the Ganaches, the
youngest asked her brother, in the most serious tone imaginable, for
she believed that there existed in the world, for the designation of
men of talent, no other terms than those which he was in the habit of
using: "Is he really an amazing good egg, this Bergotte? Is he in the
category of the great lads, good eggs like Villiers and Catullus?"
"I've met him several times at dress rehearsals," said M. Nissim
Bernard. "He is an uncouth creature, a sort of Schlemihl." There was
nothing very serious in this allusion to Chamisso's story but the
epithet 'Schlemihl' formed part of that dialect, half–German,
half–Jewish, the use of which delighted M. Bloch in the family circle,
but struck him as vulgar and out of place before strangers. And so he
cast a reproving glance at his uncle. "He has talent," said Bloch.
"Ah!" His sister sighed gravely, as though to imply that in that case
there was some excuse for me. "All writers have talent," said M. Bloch
scornfully. "In fact it appears," went on his son, raising his fork,
and screwing up his eyes with an air of impish irony, "that he is
going to put up for the Academy." "Go on. He hasn't enough to shew
them," replied his father, who seemed not to have for the Academy the
same contempt as his son and daughters. "He's not big enough."
"Besides, the Academy is a salon, and Bergotte has no polish,"
declared the uncle (whose heiress Mme. Bloch was), a mild and
inoffensive person whose surname, Bernard, might perhaps by itself
have quickened my grandfather's powers of diagnosis, but would have
appeared too little in harmony with a face which looked as if it had
been brought back from Darius's palace and restored by Mme.
Dieulafoy, had not (chosen by some collector desirous of giving a
crowning touch of orientalism to this figure from Susa) his first
name, Nissim, stretched out above it the pinions of an androcephalous
bull from Khorsabad. But M. Bloch never stopped insulting his uncle,
whether it was that he was excited by the unresisting good–humour of
his butt, or that the rent of the villa being paid by M. Nissim
Bernard, the beneficiary wished to shew that he kept his independence,
and, more important still, that he was not seeking by flattery to make
sure of the rich inheritance to come. What most hurt the old man was
being treated so rudely in front of the manservant. He murmured an
unintelligible sentence of which all that could be made out was: "when
the meschores are in the room." 'Meschores,' in the Bible, means 'the
servant of God.' In the family circle the Blochs used the word when
they referred to their own servants, and were always exhilarated by
it, because their certainty of not being understood either by
Christians or by the servants themselves enhanced in M. Nissim Bernard
and M. Bloch their twofold distinction of being 'masters' and at the
same time 'Jews.' But this latter source of satisfaction became a
source of displeasure when there was 'company.' At such times M.
Bloch, hearing his uncle say 'meschores,' felt that he was making his
oriental side too prominent, just as a light–of–love who has invited
some of her sisters to meet her respectable friends is annoyed if they
allude to their profession or use words that do not sound quite nice.
Therefore, so far from his uncle's request's producing any effect on
M. Bloch, he, beside himself with rage, could contain himself no
longer. He let no opportunity pass of scarifying his wretched uncle.
"Of course, when there is a chance of saying anything stupid, one can
be quite certain that you won't miss it. You would be the first to
lick his boots if he were in the room!" shouted M. Bloch, while M.
Nissim Bernard in sorrow lowered over his plate the ringleted beard of
King Sargon. My friend, when he began to grow his beard, which also
was blue–black and crimped, became very like his great–uncle.