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

would weep alone or try

to talk to Gottfried of sad things; but he seemed not to hear, or he would

not reply in the same tone; he would go on talking gravely or merrily of

things which soothed and interested her. At last he persuaded her to go

out of the house, which she had never left since her accident. He made her

go a few yards round the garden at first, and then for a longer distance

in the fields. And at last she learned to find her way everywhere and to

make out everything as though she could see. She even notices things to

which we never pay any attention, and she is interested in everything,

whereas before she was never interested in much outside herself. That

time Gottfried stayed with us longer than usual. We dared not ask him to

postpone his departure, but he stayed of his own accord until he saw that

she was calmer. And one day—she was out there in the yard,—I heard her

laughing. I cannot tell you what an effect that had on me. Gottfried looked

happy too. He was sitting near me. We looked at each other, and I am not

ashamed to tell you, sir, that I kissed him with all my heart. Then he said

to me:

 

“‘Now I think I can go. I am not needed any more.’

 

“I tried to keep him. But he said:

 

“‘No. I must go now. I cannot stay any longer.’

 

“Everybody knew that he was like the Wandering Jew: he could not stay

anywhere; we did not insist. Then he went, but he arranged to come here

more often, and every time it was a great joy for Modesta; she was always

better after his visits. She began to work in the house again; her brother

married; she looks after the children; and now she never complains and

always looks happy. I sometimes wonder if she would be so happy if she had

her two eyes. Yes, indeed, sir, there are days, when I think that it would

be better to be like her and not to see certain ugly people and certain

evil things. The world is growing very ugly, it grows worse every day….

And yet I should be very much afraid of God taking me at my word, and for

my part I would rather go on seeing the world, ugly as it is….”

 

Modesta came back and the conversation changed. Christophe wished to go

now that the weather was fair again, but they would not let him. He had to

agree to stay to supper and to spend the night with them. Modesta sat near

Christophe and did not leave him all the evening. He would have liked to

talk intimately to the girl whose lot filled him with pity. But she gave

him no opportunity. She would only try to ask him about Gottfried. When

Christophe told her certain things she did not know, she was happy and a

little jealous. She was a little unwilling to talk of Gottfried herself;

it was apparent that she did not tell everything, and when she did tell

everything she was sorry for it at once; her memories were her property,

she did not like sharing them with another; in her affection she was as

eager as a peasant woman in her attachment to her land; it hurt her to

think that anybody could love Gottfried as much as she. It is true that

she refused to believe it; and Christophe, understanding, left her that

satisfaction. As he listened to her he saw that, although she had seen

Gottfried and had even seen him with indulgent eyes, since her blindness

she had made of him an image absolutely different from the reality, and she

had transferred to the phantom of her mind all the hunger for love that was

in her. Nothing had disturbed her illusion. With the bold certainty of the

blind, who calmly invent what they do not know, she said to Christophe:

 

“You are like him.”

 

He understood that for years she had grown used to living in a house with

closed shutters through which the truth could not enter. And now that

she had learned to see in the darkness that surrounded her, and even to

forget the darkness, perhaps she would have been afraid of a ray of light

filtering through the gloom. With Christophe she recalled a number of

rather silly trivialities in a smiling and disjointed conversation in which

Christophe could not be at his ease. He was irritated by her chatter; he

could not understand how a creature who had suffered so much had not become

more serious in her suffering, and he could not find tolerance for such

futility; every now and then he tried to talk of graver things, but they

found no echo; Modesta could not—or would not—follow him.

 

They went to bed. It was long before Christophe could sleep. He was

thinking of Gottfried and trying to disengage him from the image of

Modesta’s childish memories. He found it difficult and was irritated. His

heart ached at the thought that Gottfried had died there and that his body

had no doubt lain in that very bed. He tried to live through the agony

of his last moments, when he could neither speak nor make the blind girl

understand, and had closed his eyes in death. He longed to have been able

to raise his eyelids and to read the thoughts hidden under them, the

mystery of that soul, which had gone without making itself known, perhaps

even without knowing itself! It never tried to know itself, and all its

wisdom lay in not desiring wisdom, or in not trying to impose its will on

circumstance, but in abandoning itself to the force of circumstance, in

accepting it and loving it. So he assimilated the mysterious essence of

the world without even thinking of it. And if he had done so much good to

the blind girl, to Christophe, and doubtless to many others who would be

forever unknown, it was because, instead of bringing the customary words of

the revolt of man against nature, he brought something of the indifferent

peace of Nature, and reconciled the submissive soul with her. He did good

like the fields, the woods, all Nature with which he was impregnated.

Christophe remembered the evenings he had spent with Gottfried in the

country, his walks as a child, the stories and songs in the night. He

remembered also the last walk he had taken with his uncle, on the hill

above the town, on a cold winter’s morning, and the tears came to his eyes

once more. He did not try to sleep, so as to remain with his memories. He

did not wish to lose one moment of that night in the little place, filled

with the soul of Gottfried, to which he had been led as though impelled by

some unknown force. But while he lay listening to the irregular trickling

of the fountain and the shrill cries of the bats, the healthy fatigue of

youth mastered his will, and he fell asleep.

 

When he awoke the sun was shining: everybody on the farm was already at

work. In the hall he found only the old woman and the children. The young

couple were in the fields, sand Modesta had gone to milk. They looked for

her in vain. She was nowhere to be found. Christophe said he would not wait

for her return. He did not much want to see her, and he said that he was in

a hurry. He set out after telling the old woman to bid the others good-bye

for him.

 

As he was leaving the village at a turn of the road he the blind girl

sitting on a bank under a hawthorn hedge. She got up as she heard him

coming, approached him smiling, took his hand, and said:

 

“Come.”

 

They climbed up through meadows to a little shady flowering field filled

with tombstones, which looked down on the village. She led him to a grave

and said:

 

“He is there.”

 

They both knelt down. Christophe remembered another grave by which he had

knelt with Gottfried, and he thought:

 

“Soon it will be my turn.”

 

But there was no sadness in his thought. A great peace was ascending from

the earth. Christophe leaned over the grave and said, in a whisper to

Gottfried:

 

“Enter into me!…”

 

Modesta was praying, with her hands clasped and her lips moving in silence.

Then she went round the grave on her knees, feeling the ground and the

grass and the flowers with her hands. She seemed to caress them, her quick

fingers seemed to see. They gently plucked the dead stalks of the ivy and

the faded violets. She laid her hand on the curb to get up. Christophe saw

her fingers pass furtively over Gottfried’s name, lightly touching each

letter. She said:

 

“The earth is sweet this morning.”

 

She held out her hand to him. He gave her his. She made him touch the moist

warm earth. He did not loose her hand. Their locked fingers plunged into

the earth. He kissed Modesta. She kissed him, too.

 

They both rose to their feet. She held out to him a few fresh violets she

had gathered, and put the faded ones into her bosom. They dusted their

knees and left the cemetery without a word. In the fields the larks were

singing. White butterflies danced about their heads. They sat down in a

meadow a few yards away from each other. The smoke of the village was

ascending direct to the sky that was washed by the rain. The still canal

glimmered between the poplars. A gleaming blue mist wrapped the meadows and

woods in its folds.

 

Modesta broke the silence. She spoke in a whisper of the beauty of the day

as though she could see it. She drank in the air through her half-open

lips; she listened for the sounds of creatures and things. Christophe also

knew the worth of such music. He said what she was thinking and could not

have said. He named certain of the cries and imperceptible tremors that

they could hear in the grass, in the depths of the air. She said:

 

“Ah! You see that, too?”

 

He replied that Gottfried had taught him to distinguish them.

 

“You, too?” she said a little crossly.

 

He wanted to say to her:

 

“Do not be jealous.”

 

But he saw the divine light smiling all about them: he looked at her blind

eyes and was filled with pity.

 

“So,” he asked, “it was Gottfried taught you?”

 

She said “Yes,” and that they gave her more delight than ever before….

She did not say before “what.” She never mentioned the words “eyes” or

“blind.”

 

They were silent for a moment. Christophe looked at her in pity. She felt

that he was looking at her. He would have liked to tell her how much he

pitied her. He would have liked her to complain, to confide in him. He

asked kindly:

 

“You have been very unhappy?”

 

She sat dumb and unyielding. She plucked the blades of grass and munched

them in silence. After a few moments,—(the song of a lark was going

farther and farther from them in the sky),—Christophe told her how he

too had been unhappy, and how Gottfried had helped him. He told her all

his sorrows, his trials, as though he were thinking aloud or talking to

a sister. The blind girl’s face lit up as he told his story, which she

followed eagerly. Christophe watched her and saw that she was on the point

of speaking. She