It was a transparent and breathless night; I imagined that the Seine, flowing between the twin semicircles of the span and the reflection of its bridges, must look like the Bosporus. And—a symbol perhaps of the invasion foretold by the defeatism of M. de Charlus, or else of the cooperation of our Muslim brothers with the armies of France—the moon, narrow and curved like a sequin, seemed to have placed the sky of Paris beneath the oriental sign of the crescent.
M. de Charlus lingered a few moments more, while he said good-bye to me with a shake of my hand powerful enough to crush it to pieces—a Germanic peculiarity to be found in those who think like the Baron. For several seconds he continued, as Cottard would have said, to “knead” my hand, as if he had wished to restore to my joints a suppleness which they had never lost. In certain blind men the sense of touch makes good to a certain extent the lack of sight. I do not exactly know what sense it was taking the place of here. Perhaps he thought that he was merely shaking my hand, as no doubt he thought that he was merely seeing a Senegalese soldier who passed in the darkness without deigning to notice that he was being admired. But in each case the Baron was mistaken, the intensity of contact and of gaze was greater than propriety permitted. “Don’t you see all the Orient of Decamps and Fromentin and Ingres and Delacroix in this scene?” he asked me, still immobilised by the passage of the Senegalese. “As you know, I for my part am interested in things and in people only as a painter, a philosopher. Besides, I am too old. But how unfortunate that to complete the picture one of us two is not an odalisque!”
It was not the Orient of Decamps or even of Delacroix that began to haunt my imagination when the Baron had left me, but the old Orient of those Arabian Nights which I had been so fond of; losing myself gradually in the network of these dark streets, I thought of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid going in search of adventures in the hidden quarters of Baghdad. The weather was warm and my walk had made me hot and thirsty, but the bars had all closed long ago and, because of the scarcity of petrol, the rare taxis which I met, driven by Levantines or negroes, did not even take the trouble to respond to my signs. The only place where I might have been able to get something to drink and rest until I felt strong enough to walk home would have been a hotel. But in the street, rather remote from the centre of the town, to which I had penetrated, every hotel, since the Gothas had begun to drop their bombs on Paris, had closed. The same was true of almost all the shops, the shopkeepers, either owing to lack of staff or because they had taken fright themselves, having fled to the country and left on their door a handwritten notice announcing in some conventional phrase that they would re-open at a distant date (though even that seemed problematical). The few establishments which had managed to survive announced in the same fashion that they were open only twice a week. One felt that poverty, dereliction, fear inhabited the whole quarter. I was all the more surprised, therefore, to see that among these abandoned houses there was one in which life seemed, on the contrary, to have been victorious and terror and bankruptcy to have yielded to activity and wealth. Behind the closed shutters of each window the lights, dimmed on account of police regulations, revealed nevertheless a complete disregard for economy. And at every moment the door opened to allow some fresh visitor to enter or leave. It was a hotel which, because of the money its proprietors must be making, could not fail to have aroused the envy of all the neighbouring tradespeople; and I too became curious when, at a distance of fifteen yards, that is to say too far off for me to be able to make him out clearly in the profound darkness, I saw an officer come out and walk rapidly away.
Something, however, struck me: not his face, which I did not see, nor his uniform, which was disguised by a heavy greatcoat, but the extraordinary disproportion between the number of different points which his body successively occupied and the very small number of seconds within which he made good this departure which had almost the air of a sortie from a’ besieged town. So that my mind turned, if I did not explicitly recognise him—I will not say even to the build, nor to the slimness or the carriage or the swift movements of Saint-Loup—but to the sort of ubiquity which was so special to him. This military man with the ability to occupy so many different positions in space in such a short time disappeared down a side-street without seeing me, and I was left wondering whether it would be wise to enter a hotel whose modest appearance made me think that it could hardly have been Saint-Loup who had emerged. And yet I recalled involuntarily that he had—unjustly—been involved in a case of espionage because his name had been found in some letters captured on a German officer. He had, of course, been completely exonerated by the military authorities. But in spite of myself I associated this recollection with what I now saw. Was this hotel being used as a meeting-place of spies?
The officer had only just disappeared when I saw some private soldiers of various arms go in, which further strengthened my suspicions. I was now, however, extremely thirsty. I should probably be able to get something to drink inside and at the same time I might attempt, although I felt nervous at the prospect, to assuage my curiosity. And so, but not, I think, primarily from curiosity about the officer I had seen, I hesitated no longer but climbed the little staircase at the top of which the door of a sort of hall stood open, no doubt on account of the heat. I thought at first that I might fail to discover very much, for from the staircase, where I remained in shadow, I saw several people come and ask for a room and receive the answer that there were absolutely none left. The objection to these people, I guessed, was simply that they did not belong to the nest of espionage, for a moment later a common sailor presented himself and was promptly given room No. 28. From where I stood in the darkness I could, without being seen, observe a few soldiers and two men of the working classes who were chatting tranquilly in a stiflingly hot little room, gaudily decorated with coloured pictures of women cut from illustrated magazines and reviews.
These men, as they chatted quietly together, were expounding patriotic ideas: “After all, you’ve got to do what the other blokes do,” said one. “Well, you can be jolly sure I don’t mean to get killed,” was the reply of another, who evidently was going off the next day to a dangerous post, to some expression of good wishes which I had not heard. “I reckon, at twenty-two, after only doing six months, it would be a bit hard,” he exclaimed in a voice in which could be heard, even more plainly than the desire to go on living, the assurance that his reasoning was correct, as though the fact that he was only twenty-two could not fail to give him a better chance of survival, as though it were out of the question that he should be killed. “It’s terrific in Paris,” said another; “you’d never know there’s a war on. How about you, Julot, d’you still mean to join up?” “Of course I do, I can’t wait to take a pot-shot or two at these filthy Boches.” “This Joffre, you know, he’s just a man who sleeps with the politicians’ wives, he’s never done a thing himself.” “That’s a dreadful way to talk,” said a slightly older man, an airman, and then, turning to the workman who had just made the statement: “I should advise you not to talk like that in the front line, the poilus would soon do you in.” The banality of these scraps of conversation did not inspire me with any great wish to hear more, and I was about to make my entrance or go back down the stairs when I was jolted out of my indifference by hearing a series of remarks which made me shudder: “I’m amazed the boss isn’t back yet, damn it, at this hour of the night I don’t know where he’s going to find any chains.” “Anyhow, the chap’s already tied up.” “Tied up? Well, he is and he isn’t. Tie me up like that and I’d soon untie myself.” “But the padlock’s closed.” “Of course it’s closed, but it’s not so impossible to open it. The trouble is the chains aren’t long enough. Don’t you try and tell me, I was beating the stuffing out of him all last night until my hands were covered with blood.” “Are you doing the beating tonight?” “No. It’s not me, it’s Maurice. But it’ll be me on Sunday, the boss promised me.” I understood now why the strong arm of the sailor had been needed. If pea
ceable citizens had been turned away, it was not because the hotel was a nest of spies. An appalling crime was about to be committed, unless someone arrived in time to discover it and have the criminals arrested. And yet the whole scene, in the midst of this peaceful and threatened night, was like a dream or a fairy-tale, so that it was at once with the pride of an emissary of justice and the rapture of a poet that I at length, my mind made up, entered the hotel.
I touched my hat lightly and the people in the room, without rising to their feet, replied more or less civilly to the greeting. “Can you tell me who is in charge here? I should like a room and something to drink sent up to it.” “Will you wait a minute, the boss has gone out.” “There’s the director, he’s upstairs,” suggested one of the men who had taken part in the conversation. “But you know he can’t be disturbed.” “Do you think they will give me a room?” “Expect so.” “43 must be free,” said the young man who was sure he would not be killed because he was twenty-two years old. And he moved a little way along the sofa to make room for me. “Suppose we open the window a bit, you can cut the smoke with a knife in here!” said the airman; and indeed they all had their pipe or their cigarette. “Yes, but in that case close the shutters first, you know it’s forbidden to show any light because of the Zeppelins.” “We’ve finished with the Zeppelins. There’s even been something in the papers about their having all been shot down.” “We’ve finished with this, we’ve finished with that, what d’you know about it? When you’ve done fifteen months at the front, as I have, and shot down your fifth Boche aeroplane, you’ll be able to talk. What d’you want to believe the papers for? They were over Compiègne yesterday, they killed a mother and two children.” “A mother and two children!” said the young man who hoped not to be killed, with blazing eyes and a look of profound compassion upon his energetic and open countenance, which I found very likeable. “There’s been no news of big Julot lately. His ‘godmother’ hasn’t had a letter from him for eight days, and it’s the first time he’s been so long without writing.” “Who is she, his ‘godmother’?” “The woman who looks after the toilets just beyond the Olympia.” “Do they sleep together?” “What an idea! She’s a married woman, she couldn’t be more respectable. She sends him money every week out of pure kindness of heart. She’s a real good sort.” “Do you know him then, big Julot?” “Do I know him!” retorted scornfully the young man of twenty-two. “He’s a close friend of mine and one of the best. There’s not many I think as highly of as I do of him: a real pal, always ready to do you a good turn. Yes, it would be a catastrophe all right if anything had happened to him.” Someone proposed a game of dice and, from the feverish haste with which the young man of twenty-two shook them and cried out the results, with his eyes starting out of his head, it was easy to see that he had the gambler’s temperament. I did not quite catch the next remark that someone made to him, but he exclaimed with a note of profound pity in his voice: “Julot a ponce! You mean he says he’s a ponce. But he’s no more a ponce than I am. I’ve seen him with my own eyes paying his woman, yes, paying her. That’s to say, I don’t say Jeanne l’Algérienne didn’t give him a little something now and then, but it was never more than five francs, and what’s that from a woman in a brothel earning more than fifty francs a day? A present of five francs! Some men are just too stupid to live. And now she’s at the front, well, her life may be hard, I grant you, but she can earn as much as she wants—and she sends him nothing. Bah, that chap a ponce? There’s plenty who could call themselves a ponce at that rate. Not only is he not a ponce, in my opinion he’s an imbecile.” The oldest of the group, whom the boss had no doubt for that reason put in charge of the others, with instructions to make them behave with a certain restraint, had been to the lavatory for a moment and heard only the end of this conversation. But he could not help looking in my direction and seemed visibly upset at the impression such talk must have made on me. Without addressing himself specially to the young man of twenty-two, though it was he who had been expounding this theory of venal love, he said, in a general manner: “You’re talking too much and too loud, the window is open, there are people asleep at this hour. You know quite well that if the boss came back and heard you talking like that, he wouldn’t be at all pleased.”
At that very moment the door was heard to open and everyone was silent, thinking it was the boss, but it was only a foreign chauffeur who was welcomed as an old friend by everybody in the room. But seeing a magnificent watchchain displayed upon the chauffeur’s jacket, the young man of twenty-two threw him a questioning and amused glance, followed by a frown and a severe wink in my direction. I understood that the first look meant: “What’s that, did you steal it? My congratulations.” And the second: “Don’t say anything, because of this fellow we don’t know.” Suddenly the boss came in, carrying several yards of heavy iron chains—sufficient to secure quite a number of convicts—and sweating. “What a weight!” he said. “If you weren’t all so idle, I shouldn’t be obliged to fetch them myself.” I told him that I wanted a room. “Just for a few hours. I can’t find a cab and I am rather unwell. But I should like something to drink sent up.” “Pierrot, go and fetch some cassis from the cellar and tell them to get No. 43 ready. There’s 7 ringing again. They say they’re ill. Ill my foot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been doping themselves, they look half cracked, it’s time they were shown the door. Has anybody put a pair of sheets in 22? Good! There goes 7 again, run and see what it is. Well, Maurice, what are you standing there for? You know someone’s waiting for you, go up to 14b. And get a move on.” And Maurice hurried out after the boss, who seemed a little annoyed that I had seen his chains and disappeared carrying them with him. “How is it you’re so late?” the young man of twenty-two asked the chauffeur. “What do you mean, late? I’m an hour early. But it’s too hot in the streets. My appointment’s not till midnight.” “Who have you come for then?” “Pretty Pamela,” said the dark-skinned chauffeur, whose laugh uncovered a set of fine white teeth. “Ah!” said the young man of twenty-two.
Presently I was taken up to Room 43, but it was so unpleasantly stuffy and my curiosity was so great that, having drunk my cassis, I started to go downstairs again, then, changing my mind, turned round and went up past the floor of Room 43 to the top of the building. Suddenly from a room situated by itself at the end of a corridor, I thought I heard stifled groans. I walked rapidly towards the sounds and put my ear to the door. “I beseech you, mercy, have pity, untie me, don’t beat me so hard,” said a voice. “I kiss your feet, I abase myself, I promise not to offend again. Have pity on me.” “No, you filthy brute,” replied another voice, “and if you yell and drag yourself about on your knees like that, you’ll be tied to the bed, no mercy for you,” and I heard the noise of the crack of a whip, which I guessed to be reinforced with nails, for it was followed by cries of pain. At this moment I noticed that there was a small oval window opening from the room on to the corridor and that the curtain had not been drawn across it; stealthily in the darkness I crept as far as this window and there in the room, chained to a bed like Prometheus to his rock, receiving the blows that Maurice rained upon him with a whip which was in fact studded with nails, I saw, with blood already flowing from him and covered with bruises which proved that the chastisement was not taking place for the first time—I saw before me M. de Charlus.
Suddenly the door opened and a man came in who fortunately did not see me. It was Jupien. He went up to the Baron with an air of respect and a smile of understanding: “Well, you don’t need me, do you?” The Baron asked Jupien to send Maurice out of the room for a moment. Jupien did so with perfect unconcern. “We can’t be heard, can we?” said the Baron to Jupien, who assured him that this was the case. The Baron knew that Jupien, with an intelligence worthy of a man of letters, was yet quite lacking in practical sense and constantly talked about people in their presence with innuendoes which deceived nobody and nicknames which everybody understood.
“Just a
second,” interrupted Jupien, who had heard a bell ring in Room No. 3. It was a deputy of the Liberal Action party, who was about to leave. Jupien did not need to look at the bell-board, for he recognised the man’s ring. Indeed the deputy came every day after lunch, but today he had been obliged to re-arrange his timetable, for at twelve o’clock he had given away his daughter in marriage at the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot. So he had come in the evening but was anxious to leave early on account of his wife, who very easily became nervous if he was late in getting home, particularly in these days of bombardment. Jupien always liked to accompany him downstairs in order to show his deference for the status of “honourable,” and in this he was quite disinterested. For although this deputy (who repudiated the exaggerations of L’Action Française and would in any case have been incapable of understanding a line of Charles Maurras or Léon Daudet) stood well with the ministers, whom he flattered by inviting them to his shooting-parties, Jupien would not have dared to ask him for the slightest support in his difficulties with the police. He knew that, had he ventured to mention that subject to the affluent and apprehensive legislator, he would not have saved himself even the most harmless “raid” but would immediately have lost the most generous of his clients. After having escorted the deputy as far as the door, from which he set off with his hat pulled down over his eyes and his collar turned up and with a rapid gliding movement not unlike the style of his electoral manifestos, by which devices he hoped to render his face invisible, Jupien went upstairs again to M. de Charlus. “It was Monsieur Eugène,” he said to him. In Jupien’s establishment, as in a sanatorium, people were referred to only by their Christian names, though their real names, either to satisfy the curiosity of the visitor or to enhance the prestige of the house, were invariably added in a whisper. Sometimes, however, Jupien was unaware of the real identity of a client and imagined and said that he was some well-known financier or nobleman or artist—fleeting errors not without charm for the man to whom the wrong name was attached—and in the end had to resign himself to the idea that he still did not know who Monsieur Victor was. Sometimes too, to please the Baron, he was in the habit of inverting the procedure that is customary on certain social occasions (“Let me introduce you to M. Lebrun,” then a whisper: “He wants to be called M. Lebrun but he is really Grand Duke X—–of Russia”). Jupien on the other hand felt that it was not quite sufficient to introduce M. de Charlus to a young milkman. He would murmur to him with a wink: “He’s a milkman but he’s also one of the most dangerous thugs in Belleville” (and it was with a superbly salacious note in his voice that Jupien uttered the word “thug”). And as if this recommendation were not sufficient, he would try to add one or two further “citations.” “He has had several convictions for theft and burglary, he was in Fresnes for assaulting” (the same salacious note in his voice) “and practically murdering people in the street, and he’s been in a punishment battalion in Africa. He killed his sergeant.”
The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle Page 366