A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Jean Christophe, Vol. I

R >> Romain Rolland >> Jean Christophe, Vol. I




"Forgive me if I am unjust.... Forgive me if I do not love you.... Forgive
me if I cannot ... if I cannot love you, if I can never love you!..."

She did not withdraw her hand from him: she knew that it was not herself
that he was kissing. And with his cheek against Rosa's hand, he wept hot
tears, knowing that she was reading through him: there was sorrow and
bitterness in being unable to love her and making her suffer.

They stayed so, both weeping, in the dim light of the room.

At last she withdrew her hand. He went on murmuring;

"Forgive!..."

She laid her hand gently on his hand. He rose to his feet. They kissed in
silence: they felt on their lips the bitter savor of their tears.

"We shall always be friends," he said softly. She bowed her head and left
him, too sad to speak.

They thought that the world is ill made. The lover is unloved. The beloved
does not love. The lover who is loved is sooner or later torn from his
love.... There is suffering. There is the bringing of suffering. And the
most wretched is not always the one who suffers.

* * * * *

Once more Christophe took to avoiding the house. He could not bear it. He
could not bear to see the curtainless windows, the empty rooms.

A worse sorrow awaited him. Old Euler lost no time in reletting the ground
floor. One day Christophe saw strange faces in Sabine's room. New lives
blotted out the traces of the life that was gone.

It became impossible for him to stay in his rooms. He passed whole
days outside, not coming back until nightfall, when it was too dark to
see anything. Once more he took to making expeditions in the country.
Irresistibly he was drawn to Bertold's farm. But he never went in, dared
not go near it, wandered about it at a distance. He discovered a place on
a hill from which he could see the house, the plain, the river: it was
thither that his steps usually turned. From thence he could follow with his
eyes the meanderings of the water down to the willow clump under which he
had seen the shadow of death pass across Sabine's face. From thence he
could pick out the two windows of the rooms in which they had waited,
side by side, so near, so far, separated by a door--the door to eternity.
From thence he could survey the cemetery. He had never been able to bring
himself to enter it: from childhood he had had a horror of those fields
of decay and corruption, and refused to think of those whom he loved in
connection with them. But from a distance and seen from above, the little
graveyard never looked grim, it was calm, it slept with the sun....
Sleep!... She loved to sleep! Nothing would disturb her there. The crowing
cocks answered each other across the plains. From the homestead rose
the roaring of the mill, the clucking of the poultry yard, the cries of
children playing. He could make out Sabine's little girl, he could see her
running, he could mark her laughter. Once he lay in wait for her near the
gate of the farmyard, in a turn of the sunk road made by the walls: he
seized her as she passed and kissed her. The child was afraid and began, to
cry. She had almost forgotten him already. He asked her:

"Are you happy here?"

"Yes. It is fun...."

"You don't want to come back?"

"No!"

He let her go. The child's indifference plunged him in sorrow. Poor
Sabine!... And yet it was she, something of her.... So little! The child
was hardly at all like her mother: had lived in her, but was not she: in
that mysterious passage through her being the child had hardly retained
more than the faintest perfume of the creature who was gone: inflections of
her voice, a pursing of the lips, a trick of bending the head. The rest of
her was another being altogether: and that being mingled with the being of
Sabine was repulsive to Christophe though he never admitted it to himself.

It was only in himself that Christophe could find the image of Sabine.
It followed him everywhere, hovering above him; but he only felt himself
really to be with her when he was alone. Nowhere was she nearer to him than
in this refuge, on the hill, far from strange eyes, in the midst of the
country that was so full of the memory of her. He would go miles to it,
climbing at a run, his heart beating as though he were going to a meeting
with her: and so it was indeed. When he reached it he would lie on the
ground--the same earth in which _her_ body was laid: he would close his
eyes: and _she_ would come to him. He could not see her face: he could
not hear her voice; he had no need: she entered into him, held him, he
possessed her utterly. In this state of passionate hallucination he would
lose the power of thought, he would be unconscious of what was happening:
he was unconscious of everything save that he was with her.

That state of things did not last long.--To tell the truth he was only
once altogether sincere. From the day following, his will had its share in
the proceedings. And from that time on Christophe tried in vain to bring
it back to life. It was only then that he thought of evoking in himself
the face and form of Sabine: until then he had never thought of it. He
succeeded spasmodically and he was fired by it. But it was only at the cost
of hours of waiting and of darkness.

"Poor Sabine!" he would think. "They have all forgotten you. There is only
I who love you, who keep your memory alive forever. Oh, my treasure, my
precious! I have you, I hold you, I will never let you go!..."

He spoke these words because already she was escaping him: she was slipping
from his thoughts like water through his fingers. He would return again and
again, faithful to the tryst. He wished to think of her and he would close
his eyes. But after half an hour, or an hour, or sometimes two hours, he
would begin to see that he had been thinking of nothing. The sounds of the
valley, the roar of the wind, the little bells of the two goats browsing on
the hill, the noise of the wind in the little slender trees under which he
lay, were sucked up by his thoughts soft and porous like a sponge. He was
angry with his thoughts: they tried to obey him, and to fix the vanished
image to which he was striving to attach his life: but his thoughts fell
back weary and chastened and once more with a sigh of comfort abandoned
themselves to the listless stream of sensations.

He shook off his torpor. He strode through the country hither and thither
seeking Sabine. He sought her in the mirror that once had held her smile.
He sought her by the river bank where her hands had dipped in the water.
But the mirror and the water gave him only the reflection of himself. The
excitement of walking, the fresh air, the beating of his own healthy blood
awoke music in him once more. He wished to find change.

"Oh! Sabine!..." he sighed.

He dedicated his songs to her: he strove to call her to life in his music,
his love, and his sorrow.... In vain: love and sorrow came to life surely:
but poor Sabine had no share in them. Love and sorrow looked towards the
future, not towards the past. Christophe was powerless against his youth.
The sap of life swelled up again in him with new vigor. His grief, his
regrets, his chaste and ardent love, his baffled desires, heightened the
fever that was in him. In spite of his sorrow, his heart beat in lively,
sturdy rhythm: wild songs leaped forth in mad, intoxicated strains:
everything in him hymned life and even sadness took on a festival shape.
Christophe was too frank to persist in self-deception: and he despised
himself. But life swept him headlong: and in his sadness, with death in his
heart, and life in all his limbs, he abandoned himself to the forces
newborn in him, to the absurd, delicious joy of living, which grief, pity,
despair, the aching wound of an irreparable loss, all the torment of death,
can only sharpen and kindle into being in the strong, as they rowel their
sides with furious spur.

And Christophe knew that, in himself, in the secret hidden depths of his
soul, he had an inaccessible and inviolable sanctuary where lay the shadow
of Sabine. That the flood of life could not bear away.... Each of us bears
in his soul as it were a little graveyard of those whom he has loved. They
sleep there, through the years, untroubled. But a day cometh,--this we
know,--when the graves shall reopen. The dead issue from the tomb and smile
with their pale lips--loving, always--on the beloved, and the lover, in
whose breast their memory dwells, like the child sleeping in the mother's
womb.




III

ADA


After the wet summer the autumn was radiant. In the orchards the trees were
weighed down with fruit The red apples shone like billiard balls. Already
some of the trees were taking on their brilliant garb of the falling year:
flame color, fruit color, color of ripe melon, of oranges and lemons, of
good cooking, and fried dishes. Misty lights glowed through the woods: and
from the meadows there rose the little pink flames of the saffron.

He was going down a hill. It was a Sunday afternoon. He was striding,
almost running, gaining speed down the slope. He was singing a phrase, the
rhythm of which had been obsessing him all through his walk. He was red,
disheveled: he was walking, swinging his arms, and rolling his eyes like a
madman, when as he turned a bend in the road he came suddenly on a fair
girl perched on a wall tugging with all her might at a branch of a tree
from which she was greedily plucking and eating purple plums. Their
astonishment was mutual. She looked at him, stared, with her mouth full.
Then she burst out laughing. So did he. She was good to see, with her round
face framed in fair curly hair, which was like a sunlit cloud about her,
her full pink cheeks, her wide blue eyes, her rather large nose,
impertinently turned up, her little red mouth showing white teeth--the
canine little, strong, and projecting--her plump chin, and her full figure,
large and plump, well built, solidly put together. He called out:

"Good eating!" And was for going on his road. But she called to him:

"Sir! Sir! Will you be very nice? Help me to get down. I can't...."

He returned and asked her how she had climbed up.

"With my hands and feet.... It is easy enough to get up...."

"Especially when there are tempting plums hanging above your head...."

"Yes.... But when you have eaten your courage goes. You can't find the way
to get down."

He looked at her on her perch. He said:

"You are all right there. Stay there quietly. I'll come and see you
to-morrow. Good-night!"

But he did not budge, and stood beneath her. She pretended to be afraid,
and begged him with little glances not to leave her. They stayed looking at
each other and laughing. She showed him the branch to which she was
clinging and asked:

"Would you like some?"

Respect for property had not developed in Christophe since the days of his
expeditions with Otto: he accepted without hesitation. She amused herself
with pelting him with plums. When he had eaten she said:

"Now!..."

He took a wicked pleasure in keeping her waiting. She grew impatient on her
wall. At last he said:

"Come, then!" and held his hand up to her.

But just as she was about to jump down she thought a moment.

"Wait! We must make provision first!"

She gathered the finest plums within reach and filled the front of her
blouse with them.

"Carefully! Don't crush them!"

He felt almost inclined to do so.

She lowered herself from the wall and jumped into his arms. Although he was
sturdy he bent under her weight and all but dragged her down. They were of
the same height. Their faces came together. He kissed her lips, moist and
sweet with the juice of the plums: and she returned his kiss without more
ceremony.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Are you out alone?"

"No. I am with friends. But I have lost them.... Hi! Hi!" she called
suddenly as loudly as she could.

No answer.

She did not bother about it any more. They began to walk, at random,
following their noses.

"And you ... where are you going?" said she.

"I don't know, either."

"Good. We'll go together."

She took some plums from her gaping blouse and began to munch them.

"You'll make yourself sick," he said.

"Not I! I've been eating them all day."

Through the gap in her blouse he saw the white of her chemise.

"They are all warm now," she said.

"Let me see!"

She held him one and laughed. He ate it. She watched him out of the corner
of her eye as she sucked at the fruit like a child. He did not know how the
adventure would end. It is probable that she at least had some suspicion.
She waited.

"Hi! Hi!" Voices in the woods.

"Hi! Hi!" she answered. "Ah! There they are!" she said to Christophe. "Not
a bad thing, either!"

But on the contrary she was thinking that it was rather a pity. But speech
was not given to woman for her to say what she is thinking.... Thank God!
for there would be an end of morality on earth....

The voices came near. Her friends were near the road. She leaped the ditch,
climbed the hedge, and hid behind the trees. He watched her in amazement.
She signed to him imperiously to come to her. He followed her. She plunged
into the depths of the wood.

"Hi! Hi!" she called once more when they had gone some distance. "You see,
they must look for me!" she explained to Christophe.

Her friends had stopped on the road and were listening for her voice to
mark where it came from. They answered her and in their turn entered the
woods. But she did not wait for them. She turned about on right and on
left. They bawled loudly after her. She let them, and then went and called
in the opposite direction. At last they wearied of it, and, making sure
that the best way of making her come was to give up seeking her, they
called:

"Good-bye!" and went off singing.

She was furious that they should not have bothered about her any more than
that. She had tried to be rid of them: but she had not counted on their
going off so easily. Christophe looked rather foolish: this game of
hide-and-seek with a girl whom he did not know did not exactly enthrall
him: and he had no thought of taking advantage of their solitude. Nor did
she think of it: in her annoyance she forgot Christophe.

"Oh! It's too much," she said, thumping her hands together. "They have left
me."

"But," said Christophe, "you wanted them to."

"Not at all."

"You ran away."

"If I ran away from them that is my affair, not theirs. They ought to look
for me. What if I were lost?..."

Already she was beginning to be sorry for herself because if what might
have happened if ... if the opposite of what actually had occurred had come
about.

"Oh!" she said. "I'll shake them!" She turned back and strode off.

As she went she remembered Christophe and looked at him once more.--But it
was too late. She began to laugh. The little demon which had been in her
the moment before was gone. While she was waiting for another to come she
saw Christophe with the eyes of indifference. And then, she was hungry. Her
stomach was reminding her that it was supper-time: she was in a hurry to
rejoin her friends at the inn. She took Christophe's arm, leaned on it with
all her weight, groaned, and said that she was exhausted. That did not keep
her from dragging Christophe down a slope, running, and shouting, and
laughing like a mad thing.

They talked. She learned who he was: she did not know his name, and seemed
not to be greatly impressed by his title of musician. He learned that she
was a shop-girl from a dress-maker's in the _Kaiserstrasse_ (the most
fashionable street in the town): her name was Adelheid--to friends, Ada.
Her companions on the excursion were one of her friends, who worked at the
same place as herself, and two nice young men, a clerk at Weiller's bank,
and a clerk from a big linen-draper's. They were turning their Sunday to
account: they had decided to dine at the Brochet inn, from which there is a
fine view over the Rhine, and then to return by boat.

The others had already established themselves at the inn when they arrived.
Ada made a scene with her friends: she complained of their cowardly
desertion and presented Christophe as her savior. They did not listen to
her complaints: but they knew Christophe, the bank-clerk by reputation, the
clerk from having heard some of his compositions--(he thought it a good
idea to hum an air from one of them immediately afterwards)--and the
respect which they showed him made an impression on Ada, the more so as
Myrrha, the other young woman--(her real name was Hansi or Johanna)--a
brunette with blinking eyes, bumpy forehead, hair screwed back, Chinese
face, a little too animated, but clever and not without charm, in spite of
her goat-like head and her oily golden-yellow complexion,--at once began to
make advances to their _Hof Musicus_. They begged him to be so good as to
honor their repast with his presence.

Never had he been in such high feather: for he was overwhelmed with
attentions, and the two women, like good friends as they were, tried each
to rob the other of him. Both courted him: Myrrha with ceremonious manners,
sly looks, as she rubbed her leg against his under the table--Ada, openly
making play with her fine eyes, her pretty mouth, and all the seductive
resources at her command. Such coquetry in its almost coarseness incommoded
and distressed Christophe. These two bold young women were a change from
the unkindly faces he was accustomed to at home. Myrrha interested him, he
guessed her to be more intelligent than Ada: but her obsequious manners and
her ambiguous smile were curiously attractive and repulsive to him at the
same time. She could do nothing against Ada's radiance of life and
pleasure: and she was aware of it. When she saw that she had lost the bout,
she abandoned the effort, turned in upon herself, went on smiling, and
patiently waited for her day to come. Ada, seeing herself mistress of the
field, did not seek to push forward the advantage she had gained: what she
had done had been mainly to despite her friend: she had succeeded, she was
satisfied. But she had been caught in her own game. She felt as she looked
into Christophe's eyes the passion that she had kindled in him: and that
same passion began to awake in her. She was silent: she left her vulgar
teasing: they looked at each other in silence: on their lips they had the
savor of their kiss. From time to time by fits and starts they joined
vociferously in the jokes of the others: then they relapsed into silence,
stealing glances at each other. At last they did not even look at each
other, as though they were afraid of betraying themselves. Absorbed in
themselves they brooded over their desire.

When the meal was over they got ready to go. They had to go a mile and a
half through the woods to reach the pier. Ada got up first: Christophe
followed her. They waited on the steps until the others were ready: without
speaking, side by side, in the thick mist that was hardly at all lit up by
the single lamp hanging by the inn door.--Myrrha was dawdling by the
mirror.

Ada took Christophe's hand and led him along the house towards the garden
into the darkness. Under a balcony from which hung a curtain of vines they
hid. All about them was dense darkness. They could not even see each other.
The wind stirred the tops of the pines. He felt Ada's warm fingers entwined
in his and the sweet scent of a heliotrope flower that she had at her
breast.

Suddenly she dragged him to her: Christophe's lips found Ada's hair, wet
with the mist, and kissed her eyes, her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks, the
corners of her mouth, seeking her lips, and finding them, staying pressed
to them.

The others had gone. They called:

"Ada!..."

They did not stir, they hardly breathed, pressed close to each other, lips
and bodies.

They heard Myrrha:

"They have gone on."

The footsteps of their companions died away in the night. They held each
other closer, in silence, stifling on their lips a passionate murmuring.

In the distance a village clock rang out. They broke apart. They had to run
to the pier. Without a word they set out, arms and hands entwined, keeping
step--a little quick, firm step, like hers. The road was deserted: no
creature was abroad: they could not see ten yards ahead of them: they went,
serene and sure, into the beloved night. They never stumbled over the
pebbles on the road. As they were late they took a short cut. The path led
for some way down through vines and then began to ascend and wind up the
side of the hill. Through the mist they could hear the roar of the river
and the heavy paddles of the steamer approaching. They left the road and
ran across the fields. At last they found themselves on the bank of the
Rhine but still far from the pier. Their serenity was not disturbed. Ada
had forgotten her fatigue of the evening. It seemed to them that they could
have walked all night like that, on the silent grass, in the hovering
mists, that grew wetter and more dense along the river that was wrapped in
a whiteness as of the moon. The steamer's siren hooted: the invisible
monster plunged heavily away and away. They said, laughing:

"We will take the next."

By the edge of the river soft lapping waves broke at their feet. At the
landing stage they were told:

"The last boat has just gone."

Christophe's heart thumped. Ada's hand grasped his arm more tightly.

"But," she said, "there will be another one to-morrow."

A few yards away in a halo of mist was the flickering light of a lamp hung
on a post on a terrace by the river. A little farther on were a few lighted
windows--a little inn.

They went into the tiny garden. The sand ground under their feet. They
groped their way to the steps. When they entered, the lights were being put
out. Ada, on Christophe's arm, asked for a room. The room to which they
were led opened on to the little garden. Christophe leaned out of the
window and saw the phosphorescent flow of the river, and the shade of the
lamp on the glass of which were crushed mosquitoes with large wings. The
door was closed. Ada was standing by the bed and smiling. He dared not look
at her. She did not look at him: but through her lashes she followed
Christophe's every movement. The floor creaked with every step. They could
hear the least noise in the house. They sat on the bed and embraced in
silence.

* * * * *

The flickering light of the garden is dead. All is dead.... Night.... The
abyss.... Neither light nor consciousness.... Being. The obscure, devouring
forces of Being. Joy all-powerful. Joy rending. Joy which sucks down the
human creature as the void a stone. The sprout of desire sucking up
thought. The absurd delicious law of the blind intoxicated worlds which
roll at night....

... A night which is many nights, hours that are centuries, records which
are death.... Dreams shared, words spoken with eyes closed, tears and
laughter, the happiness of loving in the voice, of sharing the nothingness
of sleep, the swiftly passing images flouting in the brain, the
hallucinations of the roaring night.... The Rhine laps in a little creek by
the house; in the distance his waters over the dams and breakwaters make a
sound as of a gentle rain falling on sand. The hull of the boat cracks and
groans under the weight of water. The chain by which it is tied sags and
grows taut with a rusty clattering. The voice of the river rises: it fills
the room. The bed is like a boat. They are swept along side by side by a
giddy current--hung in mid-air like a soaring bird. The night grows ever
more dark, the void more empty. Ada weeps, Christophe loses consciousness:
both are swept down under the flowing waters of the night....

Night.... Death.... Why wake to life again?...

The light of the dawning day peeps through the dripping panes. The spark of
life glows once more in their languorous bodies. He awakes, Ada's eyes are
looking at him. A whole life passes in a few moments: days of sin,
greatness, and peace....

"Where am I? And am I two? Do I still exist? I am no longer conscious of
being. All about me is the infinite: I have the soul of a statue, with
large tranquil eyes, filled with Olympian peace...."

They fall back into the world of sleep. And the familiar sounds of the
dawn, the distant bells, a passing boat, oars dripping water, footsteps on
the road, all caress without disturbing their happy sleep, reminding them
that they are alive, and making them delight in the savor of their
happiness....

* * * * *

The puffing of the steamer outside the window brought Christophe from his
torpor. They had agreed to leave at seven so as to return to the town in
time for their usual occupations. He whispered:

"Do you hear?"

She did not open her eyes; she smiled, she put out her lips, she tried to
kiss him and then let her head fall back on his shoulder.... Through the
window panes he saw the funnel of the steamer slip by against the sky, he
saw the empty deck, and clouds of smoke. Once more he slipped into
dreaminess....

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.