Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (4 page)

This is not, you understand, my regular line of work. I am a certified conference interpreter. A simultaneous translator. Academic papers, political speeches, that kind of thing. Like an old-fashioned typist, I pride myself on speed, accuracy, and a certain sixth sense about language, a premonition of what lies ahead—or perhaps merely an ability to reproduce correctly what has been only briefly glimpsed. A good interpreter will anticipate what direction a speaker’s sentence is taking him and form a construction that will fit it, so that she finishes up at the same spot that he does only seconds after him without recasting, repeating, or pausing. She will recognize a particular idiom or a piece of slang he tosses in and instantly find the equivalent in the other language. She will mimic his tone and his thoughts. She will talk and listen at the same time. It’s a narrow skill performed under exacting circumstances. Like an air-traffic controller, the interpreter is well rewarded for the stress involved.

The literary translator is not as well paid, of course, but the calling is loftier. There is no need for speed here, and accuracy is taken for granted. The talent lies in nuance, in recognizing the layers of meaning in a word or a phrase, and finding some stylish version in the other tongue that will render not only the pretty surface but also hint at the yawning depths. I must confess these subtleties are often beyond me. Well, it is not professional ambition that has brought me here.

The first anniversary of Maman’s death is but three days away. I could not write this morning and finally tried to distract myself from my grief this afternoon with a much-delayed outing to the shops for a few New Year’s gifts. I had already picked an Anglo-Saxon theme for Marcel, George Eliot and Dickens, and I ventured down to Calmann Lévy where I bought
Middlemarch
—they have finally got the translation in. I look forward to discussing it with him, sharing Dorothea and Casaubon and all the rest. I also so want him to read Dickens and finally decided on
Great Expectations
.

I was looking for a wallet for Dick and had the carriage drop me on the Boulevard Haussmann. The crowds were such that the cabman could not get near the doors of the Galeries Lafayette let alone wait for me, so I paid him off there, and eventually walked home despite the cold. The store windows were full of bright lights and colourful displays, elegant gowns, silk scarves, and holiday baskets; the air smelt of roasting chestnuts and fresh waffles, and people bustled everywhere, the whole parade accompanied by music provided by an accordion player on the corner. The street vendors cried out with what seemed to me even more vigour than usual, perhaps desperate that there were only a few hours left to make their sales. The crowd pressed in on me, forcing me towards one of the vendors who stepped into my path and held some trinket out for my inspection. Even when I tried to brush him aside, he persisted:
“Mais regardez
,
madame
. Look at these beauties…” But he saw his answer in my unsmiling face, and I pushed past him into the store. It was not much quieter there, and it was all I could do to stand such a crush of humanity, make my purchase and find my way back to the Boulevard Malesherbes.

As I write the men are out at the midnight mass at Saint-Augustin, now leaving their Jewess safely at home. I sent Marcel off with three scarves, one under his waistcoat, one under his greatcoat, and the third overtop, I am so afraid this chill weather might trigger another attack. He has been well enough the last few weeks—thankfully we have not had a repetition of November’s horrible scene. Since then, he has suffered only a touch of indigestion from time to time. I would not let him go out to Mme de Caillavet’s Sunday, the weather was so cold, and wanted to keep him at home tonight, but knowing how he loves the pageantry of a good mass, I did not stop him.

We will see in the new year very quietly when they get home. Georges and Emilie had another invitation, and Uncle Louis said he would see to Papa. I was just as glad only to have the four of us. Next year will be a better time for a proper
réveillon
.

I have pulled myself out of mourning for the sake of my little wolves, and have promised Dick, who must return to school next week, a walk in the Bois this afternoon followed by treats in the tea room. The weather is so much warmer, which does make one more enthusiastic
about the idea of stepping out. I must continue to follow Maman’s great example of fortitude and grace, and learn to be brave in grief. Marcel especially needs my strength, even if he is becoming such a grand socialite.

There were a flood of New Year’s invitations. Mme Hayman has suggested he start visiting her salon now, and he can be seen at Mme Straus’s every week. He is chattering away with the big people as much as he is visiting with Jacques Bizet these days. Jacques’ mother is a great wit, to be sure, and his stepfather is a lovely man. Marcel says that last week some new guest, an elderly lady acquainted with M. Straus but not apparently with his wife, asked whether Mme Straus liked music. She paused and replied, much to the amusement of those around her, “Oh, in my first family it was quite the rage.”

I don’t suppose the poor old thing knew she was talking to Bizet’s widow! Or perhaps she knew but had forgotten in her eagerness to make conversation.

That is over, thank heaven, and I think it went well enough, the doctor’s grand dinner. Félicie had Geneviève’s help and managed the lobster nicely, while you can always count on her truffle sauce for the chicken. And the Nesselrode pudding looking spectacular standing on the sideboard. It is so hard to tell with these occasions, but the men stayed a long time talking in the dining room after we ladies had withdrawn, which is usually a sign some serious business is getting done. Adrien said he was very pleased, and feels things
are progressing well enough on the planned conference that he can get back to his essay about neurasthenia on which he really has not managed any work since the new year.

Marcel is becoming quite the ladies’ man, it seems. Adrien saw Mme Hayman at a dinner the other day, and she was full of his praises, saying soon no lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain will be safe from those eyes. He seems particularly smitten by Jeanne Pouquet, who has been giving little receptions for her girlfriends that he attends.

I just hope he manages his affections with a little more tact than he has in the past. All ladies want to be admired, to be sure, but Marcel gets himself in such a stew, I believe it frightens people—or worse yet, amuses them. That fuss over the de Benardaky girl back while he was still at school. Kicking about all day just waiting to go and play Prisoner’s Base with her and her comrades on the Champs-Elysées. Her parents were perfectly pleasant people, if a bit exotic, but really, Marie herself was all of fourteen or fifteen. They were far too young to be talking of love, and Marcel was making himself sick over the whole thing. Adrien agreed with me completely that it had to stop before the child lost all control over his emotions. Still, I often wonder if I was right to forbid him seeing her any more. As soon as I did he had the most dreadful attacks, as if to punish me for my firmness. At least, he is old enough now to take a more sensible attitude towards a pretty girl.

Marcel is making an utter fool of himself over Jeanne Pouquet. And apparently the girl is engaged to Gaston Arman de Caillavet. What her parents must think, I cannot imagine. Marcel thinks he can hide it all from me, but it is obvious to any fool he is in love. Mooning about all day just like he did with Marie de B., just waiting until the next tea or outing. Jacques Bizet did nothing to calm my fears by telling me a little story yesterday, when he dropped by to fetch Marcel and was waiting in the salon while he dressed. Jacques says that last year in Orléans, during his military service, Marcel was always writing to the Pouquets, and proposed mother and daughter should come for a visit. If you please, the young prince was going to rent a nearby château, just a little one, of course, in which to entertain his new friends. Sometimes I wonder if the boy can distinguish between his dreams and reality. Jacques found the story screamingly funny, but I could think it only sad. I will not tell Adrien, it would just make him angry. He is increasingly worried that Marcel is not paying enough attention to his studies.

I took tea with Uncle Louis yesterday and in the foyer of his building crossed paths with his friend Mme Hayman. I know Adrien sees her at various dinners from time to time, but it has been several years since I have laid eyes on her. Her beauty certainly is not diminishing with age and she does not wear a speck of rouge, unlike most coquettes over thirty these days.

She may be a demimondaine but she dotes on Uncle Louis more than his late wife ever did, and I am hardly a blushing bride any more to take some high moral line, so I acknowledged her politely, and we wound up having quite a chat. She was telling me of all Marcel’s social conquests. Indeed, he regularly attends her Tuesdays—where he will meet all sorts of dukes and princes, if not perhaps duchesses and princesses. I spoke quite earnestly of his need to study and find the right career, but she only laughed and said, “Madame, that one, the salon will be his career.”

I told Uncle Louis that I had spoken with her, just in case she mentioned it to him, I would not want him to think there was any difficulty on my part. He is very eager to open the house at Auteuil as soon as possible, and was urging me to come with Adrien and stay around Easter or longer.

Well, the Proust household is to be torn asunder over the question of chrysanthemums. Not small French ones, of course. There would be no point destroying a family over those scant blooms. No, it is the large Japanese ones that were all the rage this winter and sought after by every lady from the demimondaine to the duchess, if not perhaps the doctor’s wife. It is those towering bronze flowers that we are fighting over.

To be brief: Adrien has seen Marcel’s bill for the florist. I am not entirely sure to whom these bouquets were sent, besides Mme Hayman, who recently informed the doctor that Marcel had offered her a
most extravagant bouquet with a little billet attached filled with allusions to Primavera. She thought we should know, bless her. Meanwhile, I believe Mme Straus had made it clear that she did not wish to receive such offerings, and Robert de Billy’s mother even mentioned to me at tea last week chez Faure that she was rather shocked that Marcel had sent that young man flowers. Of course, the family is Protestant, so they are apt to be more surprised by demonstrations of this sort. I hope that those at least were some small package of daisies.

I did point out to Adrien that Marcel may spend his allowance as he pleases, but there is no arguing with the doctor. The cost of these flowers, the emotionalism of these assaults on the human heart, and the persons to whom those hearts belong, are all out of order. I finally got the doctor, who had happened to find the bill in this morning’s mail and opened it without noting it was “Monsieur M. Proust,” not “Monsieur A. Proust,” to agree that I would speak to Marcel first, before he broached the subject with his son. It does Marcel’s health no good at all for him to see his father angry, even if Adrien always argues that it is by pampering him that I make him ill.

Another few weeks, and we will be the first of May. Vendors will be hawking lilies of the valley on every street corner. Charming and cheap!

M. Barrère came for dinner yesterday, a family dinner, although he did want to see Marcel, and that one had
escaped to a party after our difficult encounter in the afternoon. Dick was able to entertain him instead. We had a long talk about the progress the Germans are making—they have developed an antitoxin for tetanus, Adrien reports. He and M. Barrère were debating which would be more significant in stopping disease, the possibility of antitoxins or simply improved hygiene itself. Adrien was betting on hygiene, of course, and Dick got very involved in their talk, arguing the future lay in the antitoxins. The men were cautioning him not to believe in miracles (already the idealistic young medical student!). M. Barrère was complaining that his political masters never pay any attention to these matters until an epidemic is right on top of them, and then they want the doctors to have developed a cure the day before yesterday.

The interview over the chrysanthemums was not a pleasant one. I took Marcel aside after lunch and tried gently to explain that it embarrassed people to receive excessively large gifts and that the cost was out of proportion to his allowance. He said it was only because I lacked finer feelings that I would consider such gifts overwhelming, and that in the households of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, large vases of fresh flowers were considered indispensable. He got very angry and insulted all the potted ferns in the salon before bursting into tears. I rushed to the defence of my ferns, announced, “We do not live on the Faubourg Saint-Germain,” turned on heel, and made a sweeping exit. Both mother and son should be ashamed of such dramatics, worthy of Bernhardt herself!

O
UR DIARIST WRITES DAILY
, every morning, without fail, covering these pages with entry upon entry. I can imagine her after breakfast, clothed in a morning dress that we would mistake for a ball gown, in a little study off her bedroom, or perhaps at a writing desk in the spacious salon, carefully recording yesterday’s events in her notebooks in a small, precise hand. Outside her window, carriages roll up and down the Boulevard Malesherbes, and she can faintly hear the clop of horses’ hooves through the glass. Inside, there would be only the sound of a clock ticking in an over-furnished room, with heavy curtains, dark wood, chairs upholstered in red velvet or damask, and ferns filling every corner not already stuffed with large porcelain vases, small statuettes, and Oriental curios that the doctor brought back from his voyages. Then Marcel, rising late, interrupts, looking for his gloves, or Jean enters discreetly, seeking instructions on the dinner menu.