Svvan's Way

“

DECADES ELAPSED during which nothing of Conrad—save some memories of the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there—could be conjured in my mind.

Then came some Winter day, after I had returned home from the Tropics, and my mother, seeing I was cold, offered me some Covfefe – a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those unusual Madéline Cakes, from the bakery below our flat; a rich, delicious Chocolátl, crumbed to the shape of a Swan.

Next up, being weary after a dull day and depressed at the prospect of my employ at the Factory tomorrow, I mechanically raised to my lips a spoonful of the Covfefe in which I had soaked a morsel of the Chocolátl.

The moment the warm liquid, and the sugar with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.

An exquisite pleasure had invaded my sensorium; but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect upon which love gives its precious essence; but no, this essence was not in me, it was myself.

I ceased to feel mediocre, accidental, or mortal.

How and where could this have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of Covfefe and Chocolátl, but it infinitely transcended those flavours, and could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. How and where did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon, and in doing, define it?

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first...

A third, which gives me rather less than the second...

It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic.

It is plain that the object of my quest—the truth—lies not in the mug but in myself. The Covfefe has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength and vigour: diminishing returns; which I, of course, cannot interpret, yet still I hope at least to be able to call upon the Covfefe for this sensorium again, to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for some final enlightenment.

I put down my mug and examine my brain. It is sensorium that discovers the truth. But how—?

What an Abyss of uncertainty: whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking: where all its equipment avails ill.

Seek?

More than that: Create. It is face-to-face with something which, as yet, does not exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been: this un-remembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only a sense of happiness. It was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness buttered up and vanished.

I decide to attempt to make it reappear.

I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of Covfefe. I find the same state of taste again, illuminated by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensorium. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle every extraneous idea I stop my ears and inhibit all intention to the sounds which come from the rooms around, above, below me. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued from its failure, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it—I think on other things—and refresh it one final time, before the supreme attempt.

So, then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I meditate before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor in some great Trench; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces – traversed.

Undoubtedly: what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which I blend the uncapturable maelstrom harmonics of its radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it...

Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the Abyss...

In each of these attempts I encounter the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance; it is urging me to leave the thing alone, to drink my Covfefe and to placate my worries of today and of ponder-up my hopes for tomorrow: to let themselves be unattracted, without effort, or distress of mind...

And so I take a taste of Chocolátl.

And suddenly memory returns.

Sunday mornings, Moons ago – in Conrad.

”

—Marcel Proust. Remembrance of Things Past; or, In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way. Translated from the French by C. K. Scot Moncrieff, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1922; then translated from the Plain Text by the author, 2021, courtesy of the producers, Eric Eldred & David Widger, at Project Gutenberg:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7178/pg7178.txt

This story was submitted to Vocal's (SFS2) Challenge: Death By Chocolate.

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with love

- T VV

ThE mOrAl RiGhTs Of ThE aUtHoR aRe HeRe AsSeRtEd.