Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary

Author:Romain Gary [Gary, Romain]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2223-5
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2013-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

The summer was enlivened by a quite unexpected bolt of lightning. One fine morning a taxi drew up outside the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts, and out stepped my delicatessen girl. She made straight for my mother, and staged a tremendous scene—floods of tears, sobs, threats of cut wrists and of swallowed poison. My mother was tremendously flattered. This was everything she had expected of me. At last I had become a man of the world. Not a moment was lost; that same day every stall holder in the Buffa Market was au courant and I was greeted everywhere with respectful glances. The point of view of my “victim” was simplicity itself: it was now my duty to marry her. This she supported with the strangest argument that can ever have been advanced: “He made me read all of Proust, Tolstoy and Dostoievsky,” declared the unfortunate young woman with an expression on her face which would have melted the hardest heart. “What is going to happen to me now? Who will want to marry me?”

I must say that my mother was deeply struck by this flagrant proof of my intentions. She looked at me reproachfully. I had obviously gone too far. I myself felt not a little embarrassed, for it was true that I had made Adèle swallow all of Proust, volume by volume, in rapid succession, and that, in her eyes, was as good as telling her that she could go ahead with the wedding dress. God forgive me!—I had even made her learn by heart passages from Thus Spake Zarathustra. I didn’t put her in a family way, but there was no denying the fact—I may as well come clean with it—that I made her read Flaubert, Gobineau, and—of all people—Lautréamont, and obviously could no longer contemplate slipping away on tiptoe.

I could see that my mother was weakening, and I began to feel really scared. Her attitude toward Adèle had suddenly become all sweetness and kindness, and a sort of female solidarity developed between the two women. They looked at me searchingly and censoriously. They mingled their sighs and whispered to each other. My mother offered Adèle a cup of tea and—supreme mark of good will—made her sample some strawberry jam of her own making, and the delicatessen girl was clever enough to hit on just the right note of praise. I felt that my ship was sinking rapidly. When tea was over, my mother took me into the office.

“Are you really and truly in love with her?”

“No. I love her with all my heart, but not really and truly.” “Then why have you made her promises?”

“I haven’t made her any promises.”

“How many volumes of Proust are there?”

“Listen, Mother . . .”

She shook her head. “You have not behaved at all well.”

All of a sudden her voice broke, and I saw to my amazement that she was crying. She touched my cheek with her fingers and stared at me, her eyes going searchingly and lovingly over every feature of my face, and I knew that she was remembering, that she was trying to find a resemblance.

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