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

black clouds

sailed across the soft blue sky. Shadows chased over the country in spring,

showers passed, then the bright sun shone forth again and the birds sang.

 

Christophe found that for some time he had been thinking of Uncle

Gottfried. He had not thought of the poor man for a long time, and he

wondered why the memory of him should so obstinately obsess him now; he was

haunted by it as he walked along a path along a canal that reflected the

poplars; and the image of his uncle was so actual that as he turned a great

wall he thought he saw him coming towards him.

 

The sky grew dark. A heavy downpour of rain and hail fell, and thunder

rumbled in the distance. Christophe was near a village; he could see its

pink walls and red roofs among the clumps of trees. He hurried and took

shelter under the projecting roof of the nearest house. The hail-stones

came lashing down; they rang out on the tiles and fell down into the street

like pieces of lead. The ruts were overflowing. Above the blossoming

orchards a rainbow flung its brilliant garish scarf over the dark blue

clouds.

 

On the threshold a girl was standing knitting. She asked Christophe to

enter. He accepted the invitation. The room into which he stepped was used

as a kitchen, a dining-room, and a bedroom. At the back a stew-pot hung

over a great fire. A peasant woman who was cleaning vegetables wished

Christophe good-day, and bade him go near the fire to dry himself. The girl

fetched a bottle of wine and gave him to drink. She sat on the other side

of the table and went on knitting, while at the same time she looked after

two children who were playing at testing each other’s eyes with those

grasses which are known in the country as “thiefs” or “sweeps.” She began

to talk to Christophe. It was only after a moment that he saw that she was

blind. She was not pretty. She was a big girl, with red cheeks, white

teeth, and strong arms, but her features were irregular; she had the

smiling, rather expressionless air of many blind people, and also their

mania for talking of things and people as though they could see them. At

first Christophe was startled and wondered if she were making fun of him

when she said that he looked well and that the country was looking very

pretty. But after looking from the blind girl to the woman who was cleaning

the vegetables, he saw that nobody was surprised and that it was no

joke—(there was nothing to joke about indeed).—The two women asked

Christophe friendly questions as to whither he was going and whence he had

come. The blind girl joined in the conversation with a rather exaggerated

eagerness; she agreed with, or commented on, Christophe’s remarks about the

road and the fields. Naturally her observations were often wide of the

mark. She seemed to be trying to pretend that she could see as well as he.

 

Other members of the family came in: a healthy peasant of thirty and his

young wife. Christophe talked to them all, and watched the clearing sky,

waiting for the moment to set out again. The blind girl hummed an air while

she plied her knitting needles. The air brought back all sorts of old

memories to Christophe.

 

“What!” he said. “You know that.” (Gottfried had taught her it.)

 

He hummed the following notes. The girl began to laugh. She sang the first

half of the phrases and he finished them. He had just got up to go and look

at the weather and he was walking round the room, mechanically taking stock

of every corner of it, when near the dresser he saw an object which made

him start. It was a long twisted stick, the handle of which was roughly

carved to represent a little bent man bowing. Christophe knew it well, he

had played with it as a child. He pounced on the stick and asked in a

choking voice:

 

“Where did you get this?… Where did you get it?” The man looked up and

said:

 

“A friend left it here—an old friend who is dead.”

 

Christophe cried:

 

“Gottfried?”

 

They all turned and asked:

 

“How do you know …?”

 

And when Christophe told them that Gottfried was his uncle, they were all

greatly excited. The blind girl got up; her ball of wool rolled across the

room; she stopped her work and took Christophe’s hands and said in a great

state of emotion:

 

“You are his nephew?”

 

They all talked at once. Christophe asked:

 

“But how … how do you come to know him?” The man replied:

 

“It was here that he died.”

 

They sat down again, and when the excitement had gone down a little, the

mother told, as she went on with her work, that Gottfried used to go to the

house for many years; he always used to stay there on his way to and fro

from his journeys. The last time he came—(it was in last July)—he seemed

very tired, and when he took off his pack it was some time before he could

speak a word, but they did not take any notice of it because they were used

to seeing him like that when he arrived and knew that he was short of

breath. He did not complain either. He never used to complain; he always

used to find some happiness in the most unpleasant things. When he was

doing some exhausting work he used to be glad thinking how good it would be

in bed at night, and when he was ill he used to say how good it would be

when he was not ill any longer….

 

“And, sir, it is wrong to be always content,” added the woman, “for if you

axe not sorry for yourself, nobody will pity you. I always complain….”

 

Well, nobody had paid any attention to him. They had even chaffed him about

looking so well and Modesta—(that was the blind girl’s name)—who had just

relieved him of his pack had asked him if he was never going to be tired of

running like a young man. He smiled in reply, for he could not speak. He

sat on the seat by the door. Everybody went about their work, the men to

the fields, the woman to her cooking. Modesta went near the seat, she stood

leaning against the door with her knitting in her hands and talked to

Gottfried. He did not reply; she did not ask him for any reply and told

him everything that had happened since his last visit. He breathed with

difficulty and she heard him trying hard to speak. Instead of being anxious

about him she said:

 

“Don’t speak. Just rest. You shall talk presently…. How can people tire

themselves out like that!…”

 

And then he did not talk or even try to talk. She went on with her story

thinking that he was listening. He sighed and said nothing. When the

mother came a little later she found Modesta still talking and Gottfried

motionless on the seat with his head flung back facing the sky; for some

minutes Modesta had been talking to a dead man. She understood then that

the poor man had been trying to say a few words before he died but had not

been able to; then with his sad smile he had accepted that and had closed

his eyes in the peace of the summer evening….

 

The rain had ceased. The daughter-in-law went to the stables, the son took

his mattock and cleared the little gutter in front of the door which the

mud had obstructed. Modesta had disappeared at the beginning of the story.

Christophe was left alone in the room with the mother, and was silent

and much moved. The old woman, who was rather talkative, could not bear

a prolonged silence; and she began to tell him the whole history of her

acquaintance with Gottfried. It went far back. When she was quite young

Gottfried loved her. He dared not tell her, but it became a joke; she made

fun of him, everybody made fun of him,—(it was; the custom wherever he

went)—Gottfried used to come faithfully every year. It seemed natural

to him that people should make fun of him, natural that she should have

married and been happy with another man. She had been too happy, she had

boasted too much of her happiness; then unhappiness came. Her husband

died suddenly. Then his daughter,—a fine strong girl whom everybody

admired, who was to be married to the son of the richest farmer of the

district,—lost her sight as the result of an accident. One day when she

had climbed to the great pear tree behind the house to pick the fruit the

ladder slipped; as she fell a broken branch struck a blow near the eye.

At first it was thought that she would escape with a scar, but later, she

had had unceasing pains in her forehead; one eye lost its sight, then the

other; and all their remedies had been useless. Of course the marriage was

broken off; her betrothed had vanished without any explanation, and of all

the young men who a month before had actually fought for a dance with her,

not one had the courage—(it is quite comprehensible)—to take a blind girl

to his arms. And so Modesta, who till then had been careless and gay, had

fallen into such despair that she wanted to die. She refused to eat; she

did nothing but weep from morning to evening, and during the night they

used to hear her still moaning in her bed. They did not know what to do,

they could only join her in her despair; and she only wept the more.

At last they lost patience with her moaning; then they scolded her and

she talked of throwing herself into the canal. The minister would come

sometimes; he would talk of the good God, and eternal things, and the merit

she was gaining for the next world by bearing her sorrows, but that did not

console her at all. One day Gottfried came. Modesta had never been very

kind to him. Not that she was naturally unkind, but she was disdainful,

and besides she never thought; she loved to laugh, and there was no malice

in what she said or did to him. When he heard of her misfortune he was as

overwhelmed by it as though he were a member of the family. However he did

not let her see it the first time he saw her. He went and sat by her side,

made no allusion to her accident and began to talk quietly as he had always

done before. He had no word of pity for her; he even seemed not to notice

that she was blind. Only he never talked to her of things she could not

see; he talked to her about what she could hear or notice in her blindness;

and he did it quite simply as though it were a natural thing; it was as

though he too were blind. At first she did not listen and went on weeping.

But next day she listened better and even talked to him a little….

 

“And,” the woman went on, “I do not know what he can have said to her. For

we were hay-making and I was too busy to notice her. But in the evening

when we came in from the fields we found her talking quietly. And after

that she went on getting better. She seemed to forget her affliction. But

every now and then she would think of it again; she