Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (34 page)

I rose unusually early this morning, long before the hour Marcel would show his face, put on stout shoes, and slipped out into the streets. My walks at home have become severely curtailed this past year, but Venice, for all that one might expect the sea air to
be damp, seems to have invigorated me. I managed a good walk from the hotel into the small back streets on the other side of the Piazza San Marco, keeping very careful tally of how many bridges I had crossed for fear I would lose my way. In one quiet square, I came across the most unusual sight, which I looked down on from the bridge above, half in delight, half in horror. The square was filled with cats, perhaps twenty or thirty of them. I tried to count but kept losing track. There were certainly more than I have ever seen in one place. They appeared to be alley cats, not domestic ones, half wild almost, and terribly scrawny looking. It was the oddest moment, gazing down at them all, as they sunned themselves in the square like bathers at a beach.

Marcel is utterly captivated by the architecture and spends every afternoon out with Marie and Hahn admiring the buildings, with Ruskin for their guide. Meanwhile, I keep to my room at that hour, as do the Italians, whose ability to stay up late eating and drinking but still rise early is explained by their lengthy disappearances in the afternoon. The hotel is absolutely ghostlike by two o’clock and does not come to life again until tea time. I take tea in the lobby; it is absolutely charming with an exquisite view onto the canal.

“All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul,” writes our Ruskin in
The Stones of Venice
.

Marie really is a charming girl, full of intelligence and literary knowledge without ever being pretentious. She discusses art and architecture with such confidence, and with all her enthusiasm for her topic, manages to impart a great deal of information without becoming professorial. She and Marcel are well matched in that regard, sharing the same interests, but her lively spirit balancing his tendency to become obsessive when a subject has captured him. She teases him about his passions, and he always takes it in good part, knowing that she is as erudite on the subject at hand as he. Reynaldo, who arrived the day before yesterday, laughs to see them together, just happy to have introduced Marcel to such a companion.

She is not perhaps what men would call beautiful, but is a striking-looking woman nonetheless. She has those round, protruding eyes, like red currants about to pop their skins, that look quite awful on some people, but on her, for some reason, are enchanting. Their irises are a mahogany colour, as is her abundant hair, yet her skin is ivory. Her nose is slightly Semitic, yet delicate enough, giving her face strength but not aggression. Indeed, her physiognomy is truly in keeping with her character.

We took tea with her aunt yesterday, a cultivated German Jewess who speaks no French but good English. I struggled away in English—always harder to speak than it is to read—while Marie translated to and fro for Marcel. It was in the end a lively conversation with everyone nodding back and forth before they had
really grasped the other’s words. She was telling Marie and Marcel about a small church in the streets behind the Salute that they should go and examine.

I spent yesterday afternoon re-examining San Marco, stone by stone, inside and out, but could not keep Ruskin’s analysis in my head. Instead, I keep rehearsing retorts to Marcel or trying to justify myself, and finally I gave up on tourism, retreated to the coolness of my hotel room, and ordered a restoring ice. I have never wished to be an overprotective mother, nor to restrain or hamper my sons in their pursuits. On the contrary, I have, within reason, tried to encourage them. I have never complained about Dick’s bicycles nor that canoe. Have I not spent hours translating sections of
The Bible of Ammiens
and
The Stones of Venice
so that Marcel might be prepared for his travels? Did I not organize our trip here? Still, it is clear that Marcel feels I am a burden, and would prefer to be travelling alone so that he might explore the nightlife of the city. He stalked off after our argument yesterday and did not come back to the hotel for dinner. He has yet to appear this morning, but through discreet inquiries at the desk I have ascertained that he returned late and is still in his room. I will perhaps slip a small note under his door.

So, we end our Venice sojourn on a happier note, having reconciled on Friday and spent a pleasant end of week making sure there was not a single Ruskinian site we had overlooked. I shall miss Marie, who left for England early this morning. For all her great enthusiasm for life, she is a tender soul and I know Marcel values her highly.

We had agreed to indulge ourselves in a farewell tea in the lobby yesterday as she would be occupied later, dining with her aunt on her final evening in Venice. I was perhaps a few moments late descending from my room, for when I arrived in the tea salon, Marcel and Marie were already deep in conversation and did not see me approaching the table. As I drew nearer I could hear that Marcel was reciting poetry to her—some piece of romantic suffering courtesy of de Musset, I gathered from the little phrase I heard. I barely had time to wonder to myself how it is that men always know their dissection of their own pain will enthral women when I realized I truly was trespassing, for Marcel had raised Marie’s hand to his lips. Just as I was thinking I might retreat a bit and attempt to make my entrance again, they saw me and looked up. I did not want there to be any awkwardness, so I bustled up to the table, made myself comfortable, and launched into the tale of sighting the cats, for I had been up early yesterday morning to visit them again for a last time. So, we fell to discussing the oddities of daily life in this watery city, before taking our last farewells.

I
T SEEMS TO ME
that Max had a cat in those years in Montreal. Or at least sometimes there was a cat in his apartment when I visited. Maybe he was just looking after a friend’s pet for a while. Anyway, I remember standing in that tiny apartment with the animal rubbing against my legs, purring, demanding attention. I think she was orange, orange and white, with long fur. I suppose she was a she; maybe not. Somehow one always assumes cats are female although I don’t actually know in this case.

I lean down to pick her up, and the second my arms are open to her, she jumps up into them. A friendly creature. So I am standing there, with an armful of cat, stroking her coat, when Max comes up behind me and simply puts his arms around me. I can feel his body touching mine, his embrace gently containing me. Neither of us says anything. Perhaps speech is unnecessary in this moment; perhaps I just don’t know what to say. I don’t remember which it was. I just remember that we stand there for quite a while, me with the cat, him with me, taking some comfort in our closeness. Well, more than comfort perhaps. I lean back into him, simultaneously excited and reassured by his embrace. He tightens his hold on me just a fraction. Still, we stand there, neither of us making a move.

And then, I suppose, the cat must have leapt out of my arms.

Setting aside the doubts of Mme de Sévigné, who compared translations to bad servants delivering the very opposite of the message with which they are charged, I am working my way through chapters one to three of
The Bible of Ammiens
. (Chapter four I had already done for Marcel last autumn when he made his trip there.) His progress is rapid, and he seizes up each notebook as quickly as I can finish it. I am often sent scurrying to my dictionary—my English does seem slow from lack of use—but still I get through. Marcel is always urging me on, reminding me there need be nothing literary about my translation. I have done my best to render Ruskin’s English, complex, authoritative, but always elegant, but it will take Marcel’s beautiful ear to turn it into comparable French. For all that his topic is the cathedral at Amiens, his approach is spiritual rather than religious, his sense that the soaring arches and translucent windows speak to some yearning within man rather than define some creed of the Church.

With the exception of the sympathetic M. de Billy, his friends have expressed amazement Marcel would undertake such a project, and Georges de Lauris said, “Why, Marcel can’t even read a menu in English.” But I do not see why it should not work, with him polishing up my rough work into his own beautiful French. He is consulting Marie by post on some of the more tricky expressions, as she has now returned to her family in Manchester.

The doctor is much encouraged by his latest conversations with Dr. de Fleury, and now really has the full support of the ministry in these last, difficult negotiations. He leaves for London on Monday, and expects to be gone all week.

Marcel has finally told his father of our plans to translate Ruskin, and Adrien has lent cautious support, although he told me afterwards that he is skeptical anyone would really buy such a book. I was trying to explain our enthusiasm for the great British critic—how he makes you not only examine the line of a Gothic arch but also think of the anonymous hand that once fashioned it, inspired by a simple, awestruck love of the Almighty that our more advanced age, with all its technological improvements, might find difficult to comprehend—but I cannot say he was really listening.

Dick is exhausted by his work at the hospital. He was so enthusiastic when it started but the hours they expect him to keep are quite ridiculous. The students have small rooms they can retire to so they can nap when they have to work at night, and he might as well move his clothes and his books over there, for all that we see of him. Adrien is unsympathetic, and says he worked just as hard in his final years. He is a horse when it comes to work and can never believe everyone else does not have his energies. Indeed, I worry that he continues to expend so much energy on his various projects, embarking on his Mediterranean and London trips even though we will celebrate his sixty-sixth birthday this spring. Certainly, some of his colleagues keep lecturing at the Faculty after seventy if they have the health, but I do feel that he may be spending the last years we have together on his work. Not that he has ever done anything else, his profession has always taken first place, as it should, but when the
cordon
is finally established, I hope that we can rest.

With Marcel joining his father’s and brother’s side, I have finally relented on the subject of the telephone. Marcel says Antoine is known to his friends as Telephas, he so loves using the instrument, and my little wolf now so wants us to be on the line that I could not refuse him.

Marie N. is in town and came to visit yesterday. After three nights out in a row, Marcel has taken to his bed with repeated attacks of breathlessness and was not about when she called at three. We took tea together and had a lovely chat about her work in London—she has convinced a new gallery to show some of her sculptures—before I ventured to see if Marcel was fit to receive her. He urged me to show her into his room. I was not sure if this was appropriate, especially for a young lady from Britain, for the English are often more punctilious about these things than we French, but it is true that with his torso dressed in two sweaters despite the warm weather and the rest of him well hidden under the bedclothes, Marcel could hardly be called indecent. I showed Marie in and she stayed a good two hours. She had brought various books and Marcel was very eager to have the advantage of her instantaneous replies to his many questions. I wonder what she makes of him, lying in bed at four o’clock with papers strewn all over the covers, the drapes drawn against the sun, but a fire in the grate, while the thermometer still reads twenty-seven.

He has also been consulting Robert de Billy regularly, whose English is certainly better than mine
and who does know his Gothic architecture. He is especially useful on all those parts of the arches and doorways that I am always confusing, much to Marcel’s chagrin.

The widow Faure came to call yesterday. I have been remiss in not inviting her sooner, since it is surely several months now since she emerged from mourning. She looks very well and, it seems horrible to say, liberated, I sense, by her husband’s death. I took much delight in showing her our lovely new accommodation, and she duly admired all its wonders!

Summer is truly over but we can console ourselves in the colder weather with the telephone! It took the men most of last week to install all the wires—metres and metres of the stuff—and most of yesterday to put the instrument in place in the hall. I cannot say that it is an elegant machine, but I suppose we will find it useful in the end. I dialled up the Catusses’ number late yesterday just to announce to Marie-Marguerite that the Proust family was now officially ready for the twentieth century.

Marcel is quite taken with the idea that he might place a telephone call to his friends on the day of a soirée to check what time they intend to appear or dial up a hostess to thank her for last night’s ball, and has already tried calling Antoine. I pointed out to him he could perfectly adequately accomplish all these missions with the usual
petit bleu
—he is always sending Jean off to the post office with messages for someone or other. Dick, who has been supervising things, defended him
stoutly and said, “Just wait, Maman, soon there will be no more pneumatic tubes, just telephone wires!” I warned Adrien last night at dinner that he had better watch or the instrument will never be available for his business calls.