Jean-Christophe, vol 1, Romain Rolland [book club recommendations .txt] 📗

Europe for his concerts and yet interested in nothing and unwilling to

know anything! Not only was Schulz in touch with every manifestation of the

art of the day that Christophe knew, but he knew an immense amount about

musicians of the past and of other countries of whom Christophe had never

heard. His memory was a great reservoir in which all the beautiful waters

of the heavens were collected. Christophe never wearied of dipping into it,

and Schulz was glad of Christophe’s interest. He had sometime? found

willing listeners or docile pupils, but he had never yet found a young and

ardent heart with which he could share his enthusiasms, which sometimes so

swelled in him that he was like to choke.

 

They had become the best friends in the world when unhappily the old man

chanced to express his admiration for Brahms. Christophe was at once coldly

angry; he dropped Schulz’s arm and said harshly that anyone who loved

Brahms could not be his friend. That threw cold water on their happiness.

Schulz was too timid to argue, too honest to lie, and murmured and tried to

explain. But Christophe stopped him:

 

“Enough?”

 

It was so cutting that it was impossible to reply. There was an icy

silence. They walked on. The two old men dared not look at each other. Kunz

coughed and tried to take up the conversation again and to talk of the

woods and the weather; but Christophe sulked and would not talk and only

answered with monosyllables. Kunz, finding no response from him, tried to

break the silence by talking to Schulz; but Schulz’s throat was dry, he

could not speak. Christophe watched him out of the corner of his eyes

and he wanted to laugh; he had forgiven him already. He had never been

seriously angry with him; he even thought it brutal to make the poor old

man sad; but he abused his power and would not appear to go back on what he

had said. They remained so until they left the woods; nothing was to be

heard but the weary steps of the two downcast old men; Christophe whistled

through his teeth and pretended not to see them. Suddenly he could bear it

no longer. He burst out laughing, turned towards Schulz and gripped his

arm:

 

“My dear good old Schulz!” he said, looking at him affectionately. “Isn’t

it beautiful? Isn’t it beautiful?”

 

He was speaking of the country and the fine day, but his laughing eyes

seemed to say:

 

“You are good. I am a brute. Forgive me! I love you much.”

 

The old man’s heart melted. It was as though the sun had shone again

after an eclipse. But a short time passed before he could utter a word.

Christophe took his arm and went on talking to him more amiably than ever;

in his eagerness he went faster and faster without noticing the strain upon

his two companions. Schulz did not complain; he did not even notice his

fatigue; he was so happy. He knew that he would have to pay for that day’s

rashness; but he thought:

 

“So much the worse for to-morrow! When he is gone I shall have plenty of

time to rest.”

 

But Kunz, who was not so excited, followed fifteen yards behind and looked

a pitiful object. Christophe noticed it at last. He begged his pardon

confusedly and proposed that they should lie down in a meadow in the shade

of the poplars. Of course Schulz acquiesced without a thought for the

effect it might have on his bronchitis. Fortunately Kunz thought of it for

him; or at least he made it an excuse for not running any risk from the

moisture of the grass when he was in such a perspiration. He suggested that

they should take the train back to the town from a station close by. They

did so. In spite of their fatigue they had to hurry, so as not to be late,

and they reached the station just as the train came in.

 

At the sight of them a big man threw himself out of the door of a carriage

and roared the names of Schulz and Kunz, together with all their titles and

qualities, and he waved his arms like a madman. Schulz and Kunz shouted in

reply and also waved their arms; they rushed to the big man’s compartment

and he ran to meet them, jostling the people on the platform. Christophe

was amazed and ran after them asking:

 

“What is it?”

 

And the others shouted exultantly:

 

“It is Pottpetschmidt!”

 

The name did not convey much to him. He had forgotten the toasts at

dinner. Pottpetschmidt in the carriage and Schulz and Kunz on the step were

making a deafening noise, they were marveling at their encounter. They

climbed into the train as it was going. Schulz introduced Christophe.

Pottpetschmidt bowed as stiff as a poker and his features lost all

expression; then when the formalities were over he caught hold of

Christophe’s hand and shook it five or six times, as though he were trying

to pull his arm out, and then began to shout again. Christophe was able to

make out that he thanked God and his stars for the extraordinary meeting.

That did not keep him from slapping his thigh a moment later and crying out

upon the misfortune of having had to go away—he who never went away—just

when the Herr Kapellmeister was coming. Schulz’s telegram had only

reached him that morning an hour after the train went; he was asleep when

it arrived and they had not thought it worth while to wake him. He had

stormed at the hotel people all morning. He was still storming. He had sent

his patients away, cut his business appointments and taken the first train

in his haste to return, but the infernal train had missed the connection on

the main line; Pottpetschmidt had had to wait three hours at a station; he

had exhausted all the expletives in his vocabulary and fully twenty times

had narrated his misadventures to other travelers who were also waiting,

and a porter at the station. At last he had started again. He was fearful

of arriving too late … But, thank God! Thank God!…

 

He took Christophe’s hands again and crushed them in his vast paws with

their hairy fingers. He was fabulously stout and tall in proportion; he had

a square head, close cut red hair, a clean-shaven pockmarked face, big

eyes, large nose, thin lips, a double chin, a short neck, a monstrously

wide back, a stomach like a barrel, arms thrust out by his body, enormous

feet and hands; a gigantic mass of flesh, deformed by excess in eating and

drinking; one of those human tobacco-jars that one sees sometimes rolling

along the streets in the towns of Bavaria, which keep the secret of that

race of men that is produced by a system of gorging similar to that of the

Strasburg geese. He listened with joy and warmth like a pot of butter, and

with his two hands on his outstretched knees, or on those of his neighbors,

he never stopped talking, hurling consonants into the air like a catapult

and making them roll along. Occasionally he would have a fit of laughing

which made him shake all over; he would throw back his head, open his

mouth, snorting, gurgling, choking. His laughter would infect Schulz and

Kunz and when it was over they would look at Christophe as they dried their

eyes. They seemed to be asking him:

 

“Hein!… And what do you say?”

 

Christophe said nothing; he thought fearfully:

 

“And this monster sings my music?”

 

They went home with Schulz. Christophe hoped to avoid Pottpetschmidt’s

singing and made no advances in spite of Pottpetschmidt’s hints. He was

itching to be heard. But Schulz and Kunz were too intent oh showing their

friend off; Christophe had to submit. He sat at the piano rather

ungraciously; he thought:

 

“My good man, my good man, you don’t know what is in store for you; have a

care! I will spare you nothing.”

 

He thought that he would hurt Schulz and he was angry at that; but he

was none the less determined to hurt him rather than have this Falstaff

murdering his music. He was spared the pain of hurting his old friend: the

fat man had an admirable voice. At the first bars Christophe gave a start

of surprise. Schulz, who never took his eyes off him, trembled; he thought

that Christophe was dissatisfied; and he was only reassured when he saw his

face grow brighter and brighter as he went on playing. He was lit up by

the reflection of Christophe’s delight; and when the song was finished and

Christophe turned round and declared that he had never heard any of his

songs sung so well, Schulz found a joy in all sweeter and greater than

Christophe’s in his satisfaction, sweeter and greater than Pottpetschmidt’s

in his triumph; for they had only their own pleasure, and Schulz had that

of his two friends. They went on with the music. Christophe cried aloud; he

could not understand how so ponderous and common a creature could succeed

in reading the idea of his Lieder. No doubt there were not exactly all

the shades of meaning, but there was the impulse and the passion which he

had never quite succeeded in imparting to professional singers. He looked

at Pottpetschmidt and wondered:

 

“Does he really feel that?”

 

But he could not see in his eyes any other light than that of satisfied

vanity. Some unconscious force stirred in that solid flesh. The blind

passion was like an army fighting without knowing against whom or why. The

spirit of the Lieder took possession of it and it obeyed gladly, for it

had need of action; and, left to itself, it never would have known how.

 

Christophe fancied that on the day of the Creation the Great Sculptor

did not take very much trouble to put in order the scattered members of

his rough-hewn creatures, and that He had adjusted them anyhow without

bothering to find out whether they were suited to each other, and so every

one was made up of all sorts of pieces; and one man was scattered among

five or six different men; his brain was with one, his heart with another,

and the body belonging to his soul with yet another; the instrument was

on one side, the performer on the other. Certain creatures remained like

wonderful violins, forever shut up in their cases, for want of anyone with

the art to play them. And those who were fit to play them were found all

their lives to put up with wretched scraping fiddles. He had all the more

reason for thinking so as he was furious with himself for never having been

able properly to sing a page of music. He had an untuned voice and could

never hear himself without disgust.

 

However, intoxicated by his success, Pottpetschmidt began to “put

expression” into Christophe’s Lieder, that is to say he substituted his

own for Christophe’s. Naturally he did not think that the music gained by

the change, and he grew gloomy. Schulz saw it. His lack of the critical

faculty and his admiration for his friends would not have allowed him of

his own accord to set it down to Pottpetschmidt’s bad taste. But his

affection for Christophe made him perceptive of the young man’s finest

shades of thought; he was no longer in himself, he was in Christophe;

and he too suffered from Pottpetschmidt’s affectations. He tried hard

to stop his going down that perilous slope. It was not easy to silence

Pottpetschmidt. Schulz found it enormously difficult, when