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

>Lieder, warlike marches, and drinking songs. Here was shelter and refuge.

Jean-Christophe would sit in the great armchair by the window, with a book

on his knees, bending over the pictures and losing himself in them. The day

would die down, his eyes would grow weary, and then he would look no more,

and fall into vague dreaming. The wheels of a cart would rumble by along

the road, a cow would moo in the fields; the bells of the town, weary and

sleepy, would ring the evening Angelus. Vague desires, happy presentiments,

would awake in the heart of the dreaming child.

 

Suddenly Jean-Christophe would awake, filled with dull uneasiness. He would

raise his eyes—night! He would listen—silence! His grandfather had just

gone out. He shuddered. He leaned out of the window to try to see him. The

road was deserted; things began to take on a threatening aspect. Oh God!

If that should be coming! What? He could not tell. The fearful thing.

The doors were not properly shut. The wooden stairs creaked as under a

footstep. The boy leaped up, dragged the armchair, the two chairs and the

table, to the most remote corner of the room; he made a barrier of them;

the armchair against the wall, a chair to the right, a chair to the left,

and the table in front of him. In the middle he planted a pair of steps,

and, perched on top with his book and other books, like provisions against

a siege, he breathed again, having decided in his childish imagination that

the enemy could not pass the barrier—that was not to be allowed.

 

But the enemy would creep forth, even from his book. Among the old books

which the old man had picked up were some with pictures which made a

profound impression on the child: they attracted and yet terrified him.

There were fantastic visions—temptations of St. Anthony—in which

skeletons of birds hung in bottles, and thousands of eggs writhe like worms

in disemboweled frogs, and heads walk on feet, and asses play trumpets, and

household utensils and corpses of animals walk gravely, wrapped in great

cloths, bowing like old ladies. Jean-Christophe was horrified by them, but

always returned to them, drawn on by disgust. He would look at them for a

long time, and every now and then look furtively about him to see what was

stirring in the folds of the curtains. A picture of a flayed man in an

anatomy book was still more horrible to him. He trembled as he turned the

page when he came to the place where it was in the book. This shapeless

medley was grimly etched for him. The creative power inherent in every

child’s mind filled out the meagerness of the setting of them. He saw no

difference between the daubs and the reality. At night they had an even

more powerful influence over his dreams than the living things that he saw

during the day.

 

He was afraid to sleep. For several years nightmares poisoned his rest. He

wandered in cellars, and through the manhole saw the grinning flayed man

entering. He was alone in a room, and he heard a stealthy footstep in the

corridor; he hurled himself against the door to close it, and was just in

time to hold the handle; but it was turned from the outside; he could not

turn the key, his strength left him, and he cried for help. He was with his

family, and suddenly their faces changed; they did crazy things. He was

reading quietly, and he felt that an invisible being was all round him.

He tried to fly, but felt himself bound. He tried to cry out, but he was

gagged. A loathsome grip was about his neck. He awoke, suffocating, and

with his teeth chattering; and he went on trembling long after he was

awake; he could not be rid of his agony.

 

The roam in which he slept was a hole without door or windows; an old

curtain hung up by a curtain-rod over the entrance was all that separated

it from the room of his father and mother. The thick air stifled him. His

brother, who slept in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and

he was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little troubles

of the day reappeared infinitely magnified. In this state of nervous

tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The

creaking of a plank terrified him. His father’s breathing took on fantastic

proportions. It seemed to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous

sound was horrible to him; it seemed to him that there must be a beast

sleeping there. The night crushed him; it would never end; it must always

be so; he was lying there for months and months. He gasped for breath; he

half raised himself on his bed, sat up, dried his sweating face with his

shirt-sleeve. Sometimes he nudged his brother Rodolphe to wake him up; but

Rodolphe moaned, drew away from him the rest of the bedclothes, and went on

sleeping.

 

So he stayed in feverish agony until a pale beam of light appeared on

the floor below the curtain. This timorous paleness of the distant dawn

suddenly brought him peace. He felt the light gliding into the room, when

it was still impossible to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever

would die down, his blood would grow calm, like a flooded river returning

to its bed; an even warmth would flow through all his body, and his eyes,

burning from sleeplessness, would close in spite of himself.

 

In the evening it was terrible to him to see the approach of the hour of

sleep. He vowed that he would not give way to it, to watch the whole night

through, fearing his nightmares, But in the end weariness always overcame

him, and it was always when he was least on his guard that the monsters

returned.

 

Fearful night! So sweet to most children, so terrible to some!… He was

afraid to sleep. He was afraid of not sleeping. Waking or sleeping, he

was surrounded by monstrous shapes, the phantoms of his own brain, the

larvæ floating in the half-day and twilight of childhood, as in the dark

chiaroscuro of sickness.

 

But these fancied terrors were soon to be blotted out in the great

Fear—that which is in the hearts of all men; that Fear which Wisdom does

in vain preen itself on forgetting or denying—Death.

 

*

 

One day when he was rummaging in a cupboard, he came upon several things

that he did not know—a child’s frock and a striped bonnet. He took them in

triumph to his mother, who, instead of smiling at him, looked vexed, and

bade him, take them back to the place where he had found them. When he

hesitated to obey, and asked her why, she snatched them from him without

reply, and put them on a shelf where he could not reach them. Roused to

curiosity, he plied her with questions. At last she told him that there had

been a little brother who had died before Jean-Christophe came into the

world. He was taken aback—he had never heard tell of him. He was silent

for a moment, and then tried to find out more. His mother seemed to be lost

in thought; but she told him that the little brother was called

Jean-Christophe like himself, but was more sensible. He put more questions

to her, but she would not reply readily. She told him only that his brother

was in Heaven, and was praying for them all. Jean-Christophe could get no

more out of her; she bade him be quiet, and to let her go on with her work.

She seemed to be absorbed in her sewing; she looked anxious, and did not

raise her eyes. But after some time she looked at him where he was in the

corner, whither he had retired to sulk, began to smile, and told him to go

and play outside.

 

These scraps of conversation profoundly agitated Jean-Christophe. There had

been a child, a little boy, belonging to his mother, like himself, bearing

the same name, almost exactly the same, and he was dead! Dead! He did not

exactly know what that was, but it was something terrible. And they never

talked of this other Jean-Christophe; he was quite forgotten. It would be

the same with him if he were to die? This thought was with him still in the

evening at table with his family, when he saw them all laughing and talking

of trifles. So, then, it was possible that they would be gay after he was

dead! Oh! he never would have believed that his mother could be selfish

enough to laugh after the death of her little boy! He hated them all. He

wanted to weep for himself, for his own death, in advance. At the same time

he wanted to ask a whole heap of questions, but he dared not; he remembered

the voice in which his mother had bid him be quiet. At last he could

contain himself no longer, and one night when he had gone to bed, and

Louisa came to kiss him, he asked:

 

“Mother, did he sleep in my bed?”

 

The poor woman trembled, and, trying to take on an indifferent tone of

voice, she asked:

 

“Who?”

 

“The little boy who is dead,” said Jean-Christophe in a whisper.

 

His mother clutched him with her hands.

 

“Be quiet—quiet,” she said.

 

Her voice trembled. Jean-Christophe, whose head was leaning against her

bosom, heard her heart beating. There was a moment of silence, then she

said:

 

“You must never talk of that, my dear…. Go to sleep…. No, it was not

his bed.”

 

She kissed him. He thought he felt her cheek wet against his. He wished he

could have been sure of it. He was a little comforted. There was grief in

her then! Then he doubted it again the next moment, when he heard her in

the next room talking in a quiet, ordinary voice. Which was true—that or

what had just been? He turned about for long in his bed without finding any

answer. He wanted his mother to suffer; not that he also did not suffer in

the knowledge that she was sad, but it would have done him so much good, in

spite of everything! He would have felt himself less alone. He slept, and

next day thought no more of it.

 

Some weeks afterwards one of the urchins with whom he played in the street

did not come at the usual time. One of them said that he was ill, and they

got used to not seeing him in their games. It was explained, it was quite

simple. One evening Jean-Christophe had gone to bed; it was early, and from

the recess in which his bed was, he saw the light in the room. There was a

knock at the door. A neighbor had come to have a chat. He listened

absently, telling himself stories as usual. The words of their talk did not

reach him. Suddenly he heard the neighbor say: “He is dead.” His blood

stopped, for he had understood who was dead. He listened and held his

breath. His parents cried out. Melchior’s booming voice said:

 

“Jean-Christophe, do you hear? Poor Fritz is dead.”

 

Jean-Christophe made an effort, and replied quietly:

 

“Yes, papa.”

 

His bosom was drawn tight as in a vise.

 

Melchior went on:

 

“‘Yes, papa.’ Is that all you say? You are not grieved by it.”

 

Louisa, who understood the child, said:

 

“‘Ssh! Let him sleep!”