Yet that same general idea was, in some measure, the condition of the existence of such qualities and values. It was because he was a noble that his passion for ideas and his attraction to socialism, which made him seek the company of young, pretentious and badly dressed students, attested to something genuinely pure and disinterested in him, though the same could not be said about them. In his belief that he was the heir to an ignorant and selfish class, he endeavoured in all earnestness to have them forgive his aristocratic origins; yet it was these very origins which fascinated them and made them seek him out, though they made a show of coolness and even insolence towards him. So he would find himself making overtures to people the likes of whom my astounded family, imbued as they were with the sociology of Combray, would have expected him to shun. One day as I sat with him on the sands, we overheard a voice from a nearby tent bemoaning the dense infestations of Jews that one had to put up with in Balbec: ‘You can’t walk ten yards without stepping on one! Not that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool enemy of the chosen people, but hereabouts there’s a glut of them. One’s surrounded by people saying, “I say, Apraham, I’ve chust seen Chacob.” One might as well be in the rue d’Aboukir.’42 Eventually, the man who found Jews so distasteful stepped out of the tent and we glanced up to look at the anti-Semite: it was my old school-friend Bloch. Saint-Loup immediately asked me to remind Bloch that they had met before: once when they both sat for the Concours général,43 at which Bloch had won the top prize, and on a later occasion, in one of the universités populaires.
I sometimes permitted myself a smile when I noticed in Robert the lessons once taught to him by the Jesuits, evident in the embarrassment which overcame him each time he risked hurting someone’s feelings, as when one of his intellectual friends committed a social solecism or did something outlandish, the sort of thing which Saint-Loup saw as quite insignificant but which, if it had come to the attention of others, he sensed the person in question would have blushed for. So it was always Robert who blushed, as though he was the culprit, for instance on the day when Bloch said he would call at the hotel to see him, then added:
‘Since the idea of kicking my heels among all the bogus gimcrackery of these palatial caravanserais is intolerable to me, and since gipsy orchestras make me feel ill, just tell the “lyfte” to make them be quiet and inform you without further ado of my presence.’44
I was none too pleased at the thought that Bloch might turn up at the hotel. The trouble was that he was not alone: he had come to Balbec with his sisters, who had many relatives and friends there. This Jewish colony was more picturesque than pleasant. Balbec, in this respect, was rather like certain countries, Russia or Rumania, for example, where, as geography classes inform us, the Jewish population does not enjoy the same favour, and has not attained the same degree of assimilation, as in Paris, say. Eternally together, quite without admixture of any extraneous element, whenever Bloch’s uncles or female cousins, or any of their co-religionists of either sex, went to the Casino, some of them heading for the ‘ball’, others turning towards the baccarat rooms, they formed a homogeneous procession, quite distinct from the people who watched them pass and who recognized them from previous years without ever exchanging a greeting with them, whether it was the Cambremers’ set, the little clan of the First President from Caen, people of exalted social position or of the mere middle classes, even simple corn chandlers down from Paris, none of whose daughters, beautiful, proud and scornful, as French as the statues of Rheims cathedral, would have dreamed of mixing with a rabble of ill-bred hussies who thought ‘seaside’ modishness so important that they always looked as though they had just been shrimping or were dancing the tango. As for the men, despite their glossy dinner-jackets and patent-leather shoes, they were so unmistakable in their physical characteristics that they brought to mind those allegedly ‘clever’ likenesses contrived by painters who, in illustrating the Gospels or the Arabian Nights, remember the country where the story unfolds and give to St Peter or Ali Baba the features of the most self-important ‘punter’ in Balbec. Bloch introduced his sisters to me, girls at whom he would suddenly snap to make them shut up, but who hailed with gales of mirth the slightest joke of this brother of theirs, their admiration and their idol. It is quite likely that this Jewish community, like any other, perhaps more than any other, could boast of many charms, qualities and virtues. The enjoyment of these, however, was restricted to its members. The fact was they were disliked; and this, once they became aware of it, became a proof in their eyes of anti-Semitism, against which they ranged themselves in a dense phalanx, closing ranks in the face of a world which was, in any case, in no mind to join their group.
The reference to the ‘lyfte’ had come as no surprise to me: a few days earlier, Bloch having asked me what I was doing in Balbec (he seemed to take it for granted that his own presence there was self-explanatory) and whether I was hoping to ‘pick up a few useful connections’, and as I had replied that my visit there was the fulfilment of one of my oldest dreams, not quite as strong, however, as my longing to see Venice, he said, ‘Ah, yes, sitting about with the lovely ladies, sipping sherbet, pretending to read The Stones of Venyce of Lord John Ruskin – a moping monomaniac, by the way, and one of the crashingest bores ever invented.’ Bloch clearly thought that in England not only all individuals of the masculine gender were Lords, but that the letter i was always pronounced like a y. My new friend Saint-Loup looked on this mispronunciation as nugatory, tending to see it as indicating the mere absence of certain attributes of an elegant class, attributes which he dismissed with a scorn that was as profound as was his own mastery of them. However, his apprehension that one day Bloch would learn not only the proper pronunciation of ‘Venice’ but that Ruskin was no Lord, and that with hindsight he might suspect Robert of having thought him ridiculous, made Robert feel as guilty as though he had shown a lack of the considerateness which he actually had in abundance; and so, with foresight and his capacity for seeing himself as others might, he felt his own face colour with the blush which would darken Bloch’s face on the day when he discovered his mistake. He was pretty sure, of course, that Bloch would see it as much more important than he did. Bloch himself proved this some time later, when he overheard me speak of the ‘lift’ and interrupted me with, ‘I see – so it’s “lift”.’ To which, in a sharp and supercilious tone, he added, ‘Anyway – doesn’t matter.’ One may hear this statement, which is analogous to a reflex, spoken by all who have a touch of self-esteem, in circumstances which can vary from the trivial to the tragic, and which reveals, as it did on the present occasion, how much the thing which is said not to matter does matter to the speaker; and in the tragic vein, the first thing to come to the lips of any man who takes a certain pride in himself, if his last hope has just been dashed by someone’s refusal to help him out, may well be the brave, forlorn words: ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter, not to worry – I’ll think of something else,’ the something else which is the alternative to what ‘does not matter’ being sometimes the last resort of suicide.
Bloch’s next words to me were very kind. There can be no doubt that he was trying to be as pleasant as possible. But then he asked, ‘Tell me, are you hob-nobbing with de Saint-Loup-en-Bray because you fancy rising to the level of the nobility? Of course, his branch of the nobility is small beer – but you always were naïve. You must be going through a fine fit of snobbery, eh? Are you a snob, do you think? You are, aren’t you?’ It was not that he had suddenly taken leave of his intention to be pleasant. But his defect being what is known as ‘bad manners’, it was the one defect he never noticed in himself, the one he thought nobody could be offended by. Taking humankind as a whole, the incidence of the virtues shared by all is no more remarkable than the multiplicity of the defects peculiar to each. It is probably true to say that it is not ‘common sense which is the commonest thing in the world’,45 but common kindness. In the remotest regions, one can be amazed by seeing it suddenly and unexpectedly flower, as one
can come upon a single poppy standing all by itself in a little valley, identical with every other poppy in the world, though it has never seen any of them, and has never known anything other than the wind which from time to time ruffles the silk of its lonely scarlet standard. Even if this kindness is so paralysed by self-interest as to be in abeyance, it still exists; and whenever its functioning is not thwarted by some selfish urge, for example during the reading of a novel or a newspaper, it opens like a spreading bloom and, even in the heart of someone who, though a murderer in real life, is still easily moved by tribulations in fiction, becomes the wish to succour the weak, the just and the persecuted. But that variety in faults is no less striking than the similarity in virtues. The most perfect of persons has a particular fault, which gives rise to rage or shock. A man may have an admirable mind, may see all things with the loftiest disinterest and never speak ill of a soul, but he forgets he still has in his pocket the urgent letter which he himself offered to post for you, thus making you miss an appointment of the utmost importance; yet instead of apologizing, he will smile, because he takes pride in never letting his own life be ruled by the clock. Another one is so considerate, so thoughtful, so mild-mannered, that in conversing with you he only ever speaks of you in ways calculated to cheer you; but you have reason to suspect there are other reflections which he never voices, quite different things about you which he keeps to himself, things which fester in the heart; yet the pleasure he takes in being with you is so great that he will wear you out with kindness rather than leave you alone. Or there is the one whose sincerity is greater, but who takes it so far as to inform you, after you have pleaded ill-health as a reason for not visiting him, that you were seen going to the theatre, in what appeared to be a state of rude health, or that, since the good turn which you tried to do him was only partially successful, and since in any case three other people have already offered to do it, he now feels little sense of obligation towards you. In both of these circumstances, the second friend would have feigned ignorance of your outing to the theatre and of the fact that the same good turn could have been done for him by several others. The third friend, having also felt the need to repeat or divulge to someone else something you have said, but which can only embarrass you, basks in his own frankness and boasts, ‘That’s how I am!’ And of course there are those who irritate you by their inquisitiveness, or even by their lack of curiosity, which can be so great that, even though you tell them of the most amazing events, they have not the slightest notion of what you are talking about; and there are others who will put off answering your letter for months, as long as it deals with something of concern to you but not to them; or who will let you know they are coming to see you about some matter, which makes you stay at home so as not to miss them, and then they do not come, so for weeks you hear nothing more from them because, not having received from you an answer which their letter did not seem to require, they assumed they had offended you in some way. There are people who, heeding their own wishes rather than yours, keep talking without letting you get a word in, if it happens they are in good spirits and are pleased to see you; but the same people, if they or the weather are out of sorts, will be struck dumb, meeting your best efforts with languid inertia, no more eager to utter so much as a monosyllable in reply than if they had not heard you speak. Each of our friends is so inseparable from his faults that, if we are to go on liking him, we must leaven them with reminders of his talent, his kind heart, his affectionate ways, or rather we must try, by exercising all our good will, to overlook them. Unfortunately, this stubborn willingness on our part to overlook the fault in our friend is outweighed by his own dogged persistence in it, he being either blind to himself or convinced that others are blind to him. Either he does not see it or he believes we do not. As the danger of giving offence lies mainly in the difficulty of gauging what will and what will not pass unnoticed, one should make a rule of never speaking of oneself, given that it is a subject on which we may be sure our own view and that of others will never coincide. On seeing into the real life of another person, learning the truth of an existence which is overlaid by an appearance of truth, we can expect as many surprises as though we were exploring a house of ordinary demeanour which turns out to be full of ill-gotten gains, cat-burglar’s jemmies and corpses; and the opposite surprise can result if, instead of the image of ourselves which we have formed from the things others say of us to our face, we discover from what they say in our absence the utterly dissimilar image they have of us and our life. Each time we have spoken of ourselves, we may be sure that our harmless, cautious words, received with ostensible politeness and a pretence of approval, have later inspired a diatribe of unfavourable judgment on us, full of exasperation or hilarity at our expense. If nothing else, we run the risk of being thought irritating, because of the disparity between our idea of ourselves and our words, which is what usually makes the things people say about themselves as laughable as the approximate hummings of would-be music-lovers who, when they feel the need to tra-la-la their favourite piece, have to make up for the meagreness of their inarticulate rendition of it by an energetic pantomime and an air of admiration which is quite out of keeping with the impression they make on their listeners. The bad habit of speaking of oneself and one’s faults should not go without mention of its corollary, the habit of criticizing in others faults which are closely analogous to our own. These are always the ones we choose to speak of, as though this was an unobtrusive way of speaking of ourselves, one which adds to the pleasure of self-forgiveness the pleasure of confession. It seems too that our attention, constantly attracted to whatever distinguishes us, notices this in others more than anything else. ‘He can hardly see his hand in front of his face,’ says one short-sighted person of another; a consumptive will voice a misgiving about the state of the healthiest man’s lungs; someone who never washes keeps talking about the baths that others never take; the man who stinks says people stink; the deceived husband sees cuckoldry everywhere; the flighty woman speaks of flighty women; the snob’s talk is of snobs. And of course each vice, like each of the professions, requires and acquires a special knowledge which we are not displeased at being able to display. It takes a homosexual to detect a homosexual; a dressmaker at a fashionable party has not so much as chatted with you, yet he already appreciates the fabric of the clothes you are wearing, and his fingertips itch with the desire to feel it; and if after several moments’ conversation with an odontologist you were to ask him for his true opinion of yourself, he would tell you the number of your bad teeth. To him, there is nothing more important; to you, who have noticed his own bad teeth, there is nothing more ridiculous. It is not only when we speak of ourselves that we think others are blind: we act as though they were. Each of us is watched over by a special god, who hides our fault, or promises us it shall be invisible, just as he masks the eyes and blocks the nostrils of those who never wash, persuading them that they can blithely ignore the tide-mark near their ears and the smell of sweat hanging about their armpits, as these will remain imperceptible to the world in which they move. Those who wear or give fake pearls as presents always assume that others will think they are genuine. Bloch was a bad-mannered neurotic snob; and since he belonged to a family of no note, he suffered as though at the bottom of the ocean from the incalculable pressures bearing upon him from not just the Gentiles on the surface, but the superimposed layers of Jewish society, all more estimable than the one he belonged to, and each of them pouring scorn on the one immediately below itself. To rise to the fresh air, through each level of Jewish families, would have taken Bloch several thousand years. A much better solution was to find a way out in some other direction.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Page 40