TIME AND THE NOVELIST
649
of narratives whose periodic resolutions are held in suspension by an
underhanging continuity: it is a prolonged reprieve from death in
the attempt to make a coherent and inclusive story out of life, a
continual effort to postpone the threatened end until the ending
h~
been reached. But Proust was to be released, not like Scheherazade
from a death sentence, but from life. On his death-bed he was inter–
mittently obsessed by the phantom of a fat, pale woman in black.
Was this-reversing the sexes-his version of the Sultan, his own sub–
jective emanation of Death, or Time? Whatever
his
fears, presumably
she was satisfied with his account, and the only kind of reprieve he
now wished for was granted.
