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Jean Christophe, Vol. I

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




The lady took him by the hand and said that she would take him to her own
children. Jean-Christophe cast a look of despair at his mother; but she
smiled at the mistress so eagerly that he saw that there was nothing to
hope for from her, and he followed his guide like a sheep that is led to
the slaughter.

They came to a garden, where two cross-looking children, a boy and a girl,
about the same age as Jean-Christophe, were apparently sulky with each
other. Jean-Christophe's advent created a diversion. They came up to
examine the new arrival. Jean-Christophe, left with the children by the
lady, stood stock-still in a pathway, not daring to raise his eyes. The
two others stood motionless a short distance away, and looked him up and
down, nudged each other, and tittered. Finally, they made up their minds.
They asked him who he was, whence he came, and what his father did.
Jean-Christophe, turned to stone, made no reply; he was terrified almost
to the point of tears, especially of the little girl, who had fair hair in
plaits, a short skirt, and bare legs.

They began to play. Just as Jean-Christophe was beginning to be a little
happier, the little boy stopped dead in front of him, and touching his
coat, said:

"Hullo! That's mine!"

Jean-Christophe did not understand. Furious at this assertion that his coat
belonged to some one else, he shook his head violently in denial.

"I know it all right," said the boy. "It's my old blue waistcoat. There's a
spot on it."

And he put his finger on the spot. Then, going on with his inspection, he
examined Jean-Christophe's feet, and asked what his mended-up shoes were
made of. Jean-Christophe grew crimson. The little girl pouted and whispered
to her brother--Jean-Christophe heard it--that it was a little poor boy.
Jean-Christophe resented the word. He thought he would succeed In combating
the insulting opinions, as he stammered in a choking voice that he was the
son of Melchior Krafft. and that his mother was Louisa the cook. It seemed
to him that this title was as good as any other, and he was right. But the
two children, interested in the news, did not seem to esteem him any the
more for it. On the contrary, they took on a patronizing tone. They asked
him what he was going to be--a cook or a coachman. Jean-Christophe
revolted. He felt an iciness steal into his heart.

Encouraged by his silence, the two rich children, who had conceived for
the little poor boy one of those cruel and unreasoning antipathies which
children have, tried various amusing ways of tormenting him, The little
girl especially was implacable. She observed that Jean-Christophe could
hardly run, because his clothes were so tight, and she conceived the
subtle idea of making him jump. They made an obstacle of little seats,
and insisted on Jean-Christophe clearing it. The wretched child dared not
say what it was that prevented his jumping. He gathered himself together,
hurled himself through, the air, and measured his length on the ground.
They roared with laughter at him. He had to try again. Tears in his eyes,
he made a desperate attempt, and this time succeeded in jumping. That did
not satisfy his tormentors, who decided that the obstacle was not high
enough, and they built it up until it became a regular break-neck affair.
Jean-Christophe tried to rebel, and declared that he would not jump.
Then the little girl called him a coward, and said that he was afraid.
Jean-Christophe could not stand that, and, knowing that he must fall, he
jumped, and fell. His feet caught in the obstacle; the whole thing toppled
over with him. He grazed his hands and almost broke his head, and, as a
crowning misfortune, his trousers tore at the knees and elsewhere. He was
sick with shame; he heard the two children dancing with delight round him;
he suffered horribly. He felt that they, despised and hated him. Why? Why?
He would gladly have died! There is no more cruel suffering than that
of a child who discovers for the first time the wickedness of others; he
believes then that he is persecuted by the--whole world, and there is
nothing to support him; there is nothing then--nothing!... Jean-Christophe
tried to get up; the little boy pushed him down again; the little girl
kicked him. He tried again, and they both jumped on him, and sat on his
back and pressed his face down into the ground. Then rage seized him--it
was too much. His hands were bruised, his fine coat was torn--a catastrophe
for him!--shame, pain, revolt against the injustice of it, so many
misfortunes all at once, plunged him in blind fury. He rose to his hands
and knees, shook himself like a dog, and rolled his tormentors over; and
when they returned to the assault he butted at them, head down, bowled over
the little girl, and, with one blow of his fist, knocked the boy into the
middle of a flower-bed.

They howled. The children ran into the house with piercing cries. Doors
slammed, and cries of anger were heard. The lady ran out as quickly as
her long dress would let her. Jean-Christophe saw her coming, and made no
attempt to escape. He was terrified at what he had done; it was a thing
unheard of, a crime; but he regretted nothing. He waited. He was lost. So
much the better! He was reduced to despair.

The lady pounced on him. He felt her beat him. He heard her talking in a
furious voice, a flood of words; but he could distinguish nothing. His
little enemies had come back to see his shame, and screamed shrilly. There
were servants--a babel of voices. To complete his downfall, Louisa, who
had been summoned, appeared, and, instead of defending him, she began to
scold him--she, too, without knowing anything--and bade him beg pardon. He
refused angrily. She shook him, and dragged him by the hand to the lady and
the children, and bade him go on his knees. But he stamped and roared, and
bit his mother's hand. Finally, he escaped among the servants, who laughed.

He went away, his heart beating furiously, his face burning with anger and
the slaps which he had received. He tried not to think, and he hurried
along because he did not want to cry in the street. He wanted to be at
home, so as to be able to find the comfort of tears. He choked; the blood
beat in his head; he was at bursting-point.

Finally, he arrived; he ran up the old black staircase to his usual
nook in the bay of a window above the river; he hurled himself into it
breathlessly, and then there came a flood of tears. He did not know exactly
why he was crying, but he had to cry; and when the first flood of them was
done, he wept again because he wanted, with a sort of rage, to make himself
suffer, as if he could in this way punish the others as well as himself.
Then he thought that his father must be coming home, and that his mother
would tell him everything, and that his own miseries were by no means at an
end. He resolved on flight, no matter whither, never to return.

Just as he was going downstairs, he bumped into his father, who was coming
up.

"What are you doing, boy? Where are you going?" asked Melchior.

He did not reply.

"You are up to some folly. What have you done?"

Jean-Christophe held his peace.

"What have you done?" repeated Melchior. "Will you answer?"

The boy began to cry and Melchior to shout, vying with each other until
they heard Louisa hurriedly coming up the stairs. She arrived, still upset.
She began with violent reproach and further chastisement, in which Melchior
joined as soon as he understood--and probably before--with blows that
would have felled an ox. Both shouted; the boy roared. They ended by angry
argument. All the time that he was beating his son, Melchior maintained
that he was right, and that this was the sort of thing that one came by,
by going out to service with people who thought they could do everything
because they had money; and as she beat the child, Louisa shouted that her
husband was a brute, that she would never let him touch the boy, and that
he had really hurt him. Jean-Christophe was, in fact, bleeding a little
from the nose, but he hardly gave a thought to it, and he was not in the
least thankful to his mother for stopping it with a wet cloth, since she
went on scolding him. In the end they pushed him away in a dark closet, and
shut him up without any supper.

He heard them shouting at each other, and he did not know which of them he
detested most. He thought it must be his mother, for he had never expected
any such wickedness from her. All the misfortunes of the day overwhelmed
him: all that he had suffered--the injustice of the children, the injustice
of the lady, the injustice of his parents, and--this he felt like an open
wound, without quite knowing why--the degradation of his parents, of whom
he was so proud, before these evil and contemptible people. Such cowardice,
of which for the first time he had become vaguely conscious, seemed ignoble
to him. Everything was upset for him--his admiration for his own people,
the religious respect with which they inspired him, his confidence in life,
the simple need that he had of loving others and of being loved, his moral
faith, blind but absolute. It was a complete cataclysm. He was crushed
by brute force, without any means of defending himself or of ever again
escaping. He choked. He thought himself on the point of death. All his body
stiffened in desperate revolt. He beat with fists, feet, head, against the
wall, howled, was seized with convulsions, and fell to the floor, hurting
himself against the furniture.

His parents, running up, took him in their arms. They vied with each other
now as to who should be the more tender with him. His mother undressed
him, carried him to his bed, and sat by him and remained with him until he
was calmer. But he did not yield one inch. He forgave her nothing, and
pretended to be asleep to get rid of her. His mother seemed to him bad
and cowardly. He had no suspicion of all the suffering that she had to go
through in order to live and give a living to her family, and of what she
had borne in taking sides against him.

After he had exhausted to the last drop the incredible store of tears that
is in the eyes of a child, he felt somewhat comforted. He was tired and
worn out, but his nerves were too much on stretch for him to sleep. The
visions that had been with him floated before him again in his semi-torpor.
Especially he saw again the little girl with her bright eyes and her
turned-up, disdainful little nose, her hair hanging down to her shoulders,
her bare legs and her childish, affected way of talking. He trembled, as it
seemed to him that he could hear her voice. He remembered how stupid he had
been with her, and he conceived a savage hatred for her. He did not pardon
her for having brought him low, and was consumed with the desire to
humiliate her and to make her weep. He sought means of doing this, but
found none. There was no sign of her ever caring about him. But by way of
consoling himself he supposed that everything was as he wished it to be. He
supposed that he had become very powerful and famous, and decided that she
was in love with him. Then he began to tell himself one of those absurd
stories which in the end he would regard as more real than reality.

She was dying of love, but he spurned her. When he passed before her house
she watched him pass, hiding behind the curtains, and he knew that she
watched him, but he pretended to take no notice, and talked gaily. Even he
left the country, and journeyed far to add to her anguish. He did great
things. Here he introduced into his narrative fragments chosen from his
grandfather's heroic tales, and all this time she was falling ill of grief.
Her mother, that proud dame, came to beg of him: "My poor child is dying.
I beg you to come!" He went. She was in her bed. Her face was pale and
sunken. She held out her arms to him. She could not speak, but she took his
hands and kissed them as she wept. Then he looked at her with marvelous
kindness and tenderness. He bade her recover, and consented to let her love
him. At this point of the story, when he amused himself by drawing out the
coming together by repeating their gestures and words several times, sleep
overcame him, and he slept and was consoled.

But when he opened his eyes it was day, and it no longer shone so lightly
or so carelessly as its predecessor. There was a great change in the world.
Jean-Christophe now knew the meaning of injustice.

* * * * *

There were now times of extremely straitened circumstances at home. They
became more and more frequent. They lived meagerly then. No one was more
sensible of it than Jean-Christophe. His father saw nothing. He was served
first, and there was always enough for him. He talked noisily, and roared
with laughter at his own jokes, and he never noticed his wife's glances
as she gave a forced laugh, while she watched him helping himself.
When he passed the dish it was more than half empty. Louisa helped the
children--two potatoes each. When it came to Jean-Christophe's turn there
were sometimes only three left, and his mother was not helped. He knew that
beforehand; he had counted them before they came to him. Then he summoned
up courage, and said carelessly:

"Only one, mother."

She was a little put out.

"Two, like the others."

"No, please; only one."

"Aren't you hungry?"

"No, I'm not very hungry."

But she, too, only took one, and they peeled them carefully, cut them up
in little pieces, and tried to eat them as slowly as possible. His mother
watched him. When he had finished:

"Come, take it!"

"No, mother."

"But you are ill?"

"I am not ill, but I have eaten enough."

Then his father would reproach him with being obstinate, and take the last
potato for himself. But Jean-Christophe learned that trick, and he used to
keep it on his plate for Ernest, his little brother, who was always hungry,
and watched him out of the corner of his eyes from the beginning of dinner,
and ended by asking:

"Aren't you going to eat it? Give it me, then, Jean-Christophe."

Oh, how Jean-Christophe detested his father, how he hated him for not
thinking of them, or for not even dreaming that he was eating their share!
He was so hungry that he hated him, and would gladly have told him so; but
he thought in his pride that he had no right, since he could not earn his
own living. His father had earned the bread that he took. He himself was
good for nothing; he was a burden on everybody; he had no right to talk.
Later on he would talk--if there were any later on. Oh, he would die of
hunger first!...

He suffered more than another child would have done from these cruel fasts.
His robust stomach was in agony. Sometimes he trembled because of it; his
head ached. There was a hole in his chest--a hole which turned and widened,
as if a gimlet were being twisted in it. But he did not complain. He felt
his mother's eyes upon him, and assumed an expression of indifference.
Louisa, with a clutching at her heart, understood vaguely that her little
boy was denying himself so that the others might have more. She rejected
the idea, but always returned to it. She dared not investigate it or ask
Jean-Christophe if it were true, for, if it were true, what could she
do? She had been used to privation since her childhood. What is the use
of complaining when there is nothing to be done? She never suspected,
indeed--she, with her frail health and small needs--that the boy might
suffer more than herself. She did not say anything, but once or twice,
when the others were gone, the children to the street, Melchior about his
business, she asked her eldest son to stay to do her some small service.
Jean-Christophe would hold her skein while she unwound it. Suddenly she
would throw everything away, and draw him passionately to her. She would
take him on her knees, although he was quite heavy, and would hug and hug
him. He would fling his arms round her neck, and the two of them would weep
desperately, embracing each other.

"My poor little boy!..."

"Mother, mother!..."

They said no more, but they understood each other.

* * * * *

It was some time before Jean-Christophe realized that his father drank.
Melchior's intemperance did not--at least, in the beginning--exceed
tolerable limits. It was not brutish. It showed itself rather by wild
outbursts of happiness. He used to make foolish remarks, and sing loudly
for hours together as he drummed on the table, and sometimes he insisted on
dancing with Louisa and the children. Jean-Christophe saw that his mother
looked sad. She would shrink back and bend her face over her work; she
avoided the drunkard's eyes, and used to try gently to quiet him when
he said coarse things that made her blush. But Jean-Christophe did not
understand, and he was in such need of gaiety that these noisy home-comings
of his father were almost a festival to him. The house was melancholy, and
these follies were a relaxation for him. He used to laugh heartily at
Melchior's crazy antics and stupid jokes; he sang and danced with him; and
he was put out when his mother in an angry voice ordered him to cease. How
could it be wrong, since his father did it? Although his ever keen
observation, which never forgot anything it had seen, told him that there
were in his father's behavior several things which did not accord with his
childish and imperious sense of justice, yet he continued to admire him.
A child has so much need of an object of admiration! Doubtless it is one
of the eternal forms of self-love. When a man is, or knows himself to be,
too weak to accomplish his desires and satisfy his pride, as a child he
transfers them to his parents, or, as a man who has failed, he transfers
them to his children. They are, or shall be, all that he dreamed of
being--his champions, his avengers--and in this proud abdication in their
favor, love and egoism are mingled so forcefully and yet so gently as to
bring him keen delight. Jean-Christophe forgot all his grudges against his
father, and cast about to find reasons for admiring him. He admired his
figure, his strong arms, his voice, his laugh, his gaiety, and he shone
with pride when he heard praise of his father's talents as a virtuoso, or
when Melchior himself recited with some amplification the eulogies he had
received. He believed in his father's boasts, and looked upon him as a
genius, as one of his grandfather's heroes.

One evening about seven o'clock he was alone in the house. His little
brothers had gone out with Jean Michel. Louisa was washing the linen in
the river. The door opened, and Melchior plunged in. He was hatless and
disheveled. He cut a sort of caper to cross the threshold, and then plumped
down in a chair by the table. Jean-Christophe began to laugh, thinking it
was a part of one of the usual buffooneries, and he approached him. But
as soon as he looked more closely at him the desire to laugh left him.
Melchior sat there with his arms hanging, and looking straight in front
of him, seeing nothing, with his eyes blinking. His face was crimson, his
mouth was open, and from it there gurgled every now and then a silly laugh.
Jean-Christophe stood stock-still. He thought at first that his father was
joking, but when he saw that he did not budge he was panic-stricken.

"Papa, papa!" he cried.

Melchior went on gobbling like a fowl. Jean-Christophe took him by the arm
in despair, and shook him with all his strength.

"Papa, dear papa, answer me, please, please!"

Melchior's body shook like a boneless thing, and all but fell. His head
flopped towards Jean-Christophe; he looked at him and babbled incoherently
and irritably. When Jean-Christophe's eyes met those clouded eyes he was
seized with panic terror. He ran away to the other end of the room, and
threw himself on his knees by the bed, and buried his face in the clothes.
He remained so for some time. Melchior swung heavily on the chair,
sniggering. Jean-Christophe stopped his ears, so as not to hear him,
and trembled. What was happening within him was inexpressible. It was a
terrible upheaval--terror, sorrow, as though for some one dead, some one
dear and honored.

No one came; they were left alone. Night fell, and Jean-Christophe's fear
grew as the minutes passed. He could not help listening, and his blood
froze as he heard the voice that he did not recognize. The silence made
it all the more terrifying; the limping clock beat time for the senseless
babbling. He could bear it no longer; he wished to fly. But he had, to pass
his father to get out, and Jean-Christophe shuddered, at the idea of seeing
those eyes again; it seemed to him that he must die if he did. He tried to
creep on hands and knees to the door of the room. He could not breathe; he
would not look; he stopped at the least movement from Melchior, whose feet
he could see under the table. One of the drunken man's legs trembled.
Jean-Christophe reached the door. With one trembling hand he pushed the
handle, but in his terror he let go. It shut to again. Melchior turned to
look. The chair on which he was balanced toppled over; he fell down with a
crash. Jean-Christophe in his terror had no strength left for flight. He
remained glued to the wall, looking at his father stretched there at his
feet, and he cried for help.

His fall sobered Melchior a little. He cursed and swore, and thumped on
the chair that had played him such a trick. He tried vainly to get up, and
then did manage to sit up with his back resting against the table, and he
recognized his surroundings. He saw Jean-Christophe crying; he called him.
Jean-Christophe wanted to run away; he could not stir. Melchior called him
again, and as the child did not come, he swore angrily. Jean-Christophe
went near him, trembling in every limb. Melchior drew the boy near him, and
made him sit on his knees. He began by pulling his ears, and in a thick,
stuttering voice delivered a homily on the respect due from a son to
his father. Then he went off suddenly on a new train of thought, and
made him jump in his arms while he rattled off silly jokes. He wriggled
with laughter. From that he passed immediately to melancholy ideas. He
commiserated the boy and himself; he hugged him so that he was like to
choke, covered him with kisses and tears, and finally rocked him in his
arms, intoning the _De Profundis_. Jean-Christophe made no effort to break
loose; he was frozen with horror. Stifled against his father's bosom,
feeling his breath hiccoughing and smelling of wine upon his face, wet with
his kisses and repulsive tears, he was in an agony of fear and disgust. He
would have screamed, but no sound would come from his lips. He remained in
this horrible condition for an age, as it seemed to him, until the door
opened, and Louisa came in with a basket of linen on her arm. She gave a
cry, let the basket fall, rushed at Jean-Christophe, and with a violence
which seemed incredible in her she wrenched Melchior's arm, crying:

"Drunken, drunken wretch!"

Her eyes flashed with anger.

Jean-Christophe thought his father was going to kill her. But Melchior
was so startled by the threatening appearance of his wife that he made no
reply, and began to weep. He rolled on the floor; he beat his head against
the furniture, and said that she was right, that he was a drunkard, that
he brought misery upon his family, and was ruining his poor children, and
wished he were dead. Louisa had contemptuously turned her back on him. She
carried Jean-Christophe into the next room, and caressed him and tried to
comfort him. The boy went on trembling, and did not answer his mother's
questions; then he burst out sobbing. Louisa bathed his face with water.
She kissed him, and used tender words, and wept with him. In the end they
were both comforted. She knelt, and made him kneel by her side. They prayed
to God to cure father of his disgusting habit, and make him the kind, good
man that he used to be. Louisa put the child to bed. He wanted her to stay
by his bedside and hold his hand. Louisa spent part of the night sitting
on Jean-Christophe's bed. He was feverish. The drunken man snored on the
floor.

Some time after that, one day at school, when Jean-Christophe was spending
his time watching the flies on the ceiling, and thumping his neighbors,
to make them fall off the form, the schoolmaster, who had taken a dislike
to him, because he was always fidgeting and laughing, and would never
learn anything, made an unhappy allusion. Jean-Christophe had fallen
down himself, and the schoolmaster said he seemed to be like to follow
brilliantly in the footsteps of a certain well-known person. All the boys
burst out laughing, and some of them took upon themselves to point the
allusion with comment both lucid and vigorous. Jean-Christophe got up,
livid with shame, seized his ink-pot, and hurled it with all his strength
at the nearest boy whom he saw laughing. The schoolmaster fell on him and
beat him. He was thrashed, made to kneel, and set to do an enormous
imposition.

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