À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Esquisse LXXIII
(Cahier 26, 49-53r)
It was a hotel for commercial travellers lodged in an old abbey that had become the mansion of a rich ship-owner in the XVIIIth century. Next to my room was a small rectangular drawing-room, fairly narrow and long, all panelled in wood whose delightful walls were just close enough apart to maintain some intimacy whilst giving some space, in which one is contained without being confined, where the eye falls on them just in the place it wants them to be, against all expectation. I used it as my dining room during the whole period of my convalescence; two young hotel maids would come in, set the table for me beside the grand old chimney-piece, where a raging fire was burning and as if the function they were given to carry out again was enough to revive the body, the whole ancient room seemed to relive its past life because it was constructed to be used for the most material functions in life. I was served dinner accordingly at about seven o'clock. Night was falling. If the tide was low, as the sea rolled back it left an intermittent apron of damp sand that was tinged by the sunset. At the foot of the hotel beside the little drawing-room, the sea came up to beat against the rampart that stretched above it. And its unceasing roar hemmed the distant silence. But when the tide was high, the sea beat tumultuously in that season of high winds against the foot of the rampart just beneath the window, which, not reaching the first level of the rampart, did not contain, as did certain stained-glass windows from the Middle Ages which related voyages at sea, anything but a glaucous slender expanse of concentric foamy whiteness, crashing and rumbling, ships' hulls with grey sails slipping beneath the wind to the horizon. I held the young hotel maid who was fetching me my meal back for a moment to chat. In this perfectly enclosed room, where the very shape of the room gave the impression of it being completely separate from everything, the sea at the other side seemed to close off any means of escape and thrust her upon me. Even though we were completely alone the deafening sound of the sea would have prevented anybody hearing our words and our kisses. I was leaning against the fireplace, she was stood before the table which was the only thing separating us. Things had never gone as far as this before; to feel such possibilities of pleasure within my grasp was enough for me; I was concerned only with plans for the future. I asked her to leave me her address if she left Querqueville so as to be sure of being able to find her again, to keep this possibility within my grasp. As for her she was sometimes one thing, sometimes another. Just as this hotel, which was less brilliant than those hotels for wealthy bathers, did infinitely more business, all throughout the year, and where all the services there were carried out by women only, it employed a great number of them, all young, nearly all of them pretty, or at least tall, well dressed, radiant, all of them with something to please, all different, and the hotel itself seemed like some ancient college of virgins dedicated to Neptune, where it was a pleasure to pass through and see all these beautiful and unexpected forms of womanhood, to see at any moment being realized in front of one's eyes new types of beauty as life alone presents them and which the imagination would never have known how to shape, singular and yet complete with a thousand particular charms of look, of skin, of smile, of bearing, of hair, of figure, of voice harmonizing together in them. Because in these hotels for commercial travellers people arrive at any time of day and sometimes just for a single night, the maids are obliged to stay up very late, and it is possible to get served at any hour. Often in the evening, even quite late, it happened that I ordered refreshments of some sort, so as to see coming into my room some tall blonde with majestic features, some petite, squarely built brunette with violet eyes, and to be able to keep them for a few minutes there before my gaze, to see that charming face smile, speak, and see that body standing up straight, advancing towards me, performing graceful movements. One day when I was having difficulty going up to sleep in my room, one of them said to me: "But it would only take a moment, if Monsieur wishes, to have a bed made up here by the corner of the fire." I did not accept but the simple fact of such a thing being being proposed to me had shattered any fear I had of going to bed in my room, by showing me that it was possible to escape that cruel necessity, like those narcotic pills that allow us to sleep without us having any need to swallow them, because it is enough to know that our insomnia will soon stop whenever we want it to for it not to happen. And the mere fact that I could make them come at any hour took away for me the sorrow of the night. It was no longer the prison in which one is alone, where everybody is asleep, where it is not possible to ring for someone to come. As I used to sleep better against the tremendous noise of the sea than against the empty silence where the mind has nothing to attach itself for sleep, I slept more easily in thinking that all around me in the place of that prison of my childhood in which I was alone and where in the adjoining room there lay struck down with sleep like the disciples on the Mount of Olives while the Son of Man was unable to sleep, suffers, worries, I felt all around me the patrol of vigilant maidens from which, at my summons, one of them would detach herself and come, if I so wanted, to prepare some refreshments for me, to come and chat with me, changing night into day, and even if she did not come, just to have given me that opportunity had rid the night of its character of forced and ineluctable isolation that for me gave it its characteristics and its terror. I thought with regret about the moment I would have to leave this hotel, and as it was still the case that we had to leave our house in Paris, and that we were hesitating between different apartments, one of which was Mme de Villeparisis' house, I wondered whether it would be possible to spend one's whole life in the Quatre Tourelles hotel which I would never want to leave, and go and live in a building where I would have next to my bedroom a Louis XV drawing-room, that was narrow and low, wood panelled, separate from the rest of the house and looking out over an endless vista where I could be served dinner at any hour before a raging fire in an immense and ancient fireplace.
Created 11.10.19