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

gold

leaves, lit up her tired face, with its rather blotchy complexion, her

white, soft, and rather thick hair, and her lips, parted in a smile. She

was enjoying her hour of rest. It was the best moment of the week to her.

She made use of it to sink into that state so sweet to those who suffer,

when thoughts dwell on nothing, and in torpor nothing speaks save the heart

and that is half asleep.

 

“Mother,” he said, “I want to go out. I am going by Buir. I shall be rather

late.”

 

Louisa, who was dozing off, trembled a little. Then she turned her head

towards him and looked at him with her calm, kind eyes.

 

“Yes, my dear, go,” she said. “You are right; make use of the fine

weather.”

 

She smiled at him. He smiled at her. They looked at each other for a

moment, then they said goodnight affectionately, nodding and smiling with

the eyes.

 

He closed the door softly. She slipped back into her reverie, which her

son’s smile had lit up with a bright ray of light like the sunbeam on the

pale leaves of the convolvulus.

 

So he left her—forever.

 

*

 

An October evening. A pale watery sun. The drowsy country is sinking to

sleep. Little village bells are slowly ringing in the silence of the

fields. Columns of smoke rise slowly in the midst of the plowed fields. A

fine mist hovers in the distance. The white fogs are awaiting the coming of

the night to rise…. A dog with his nose to the ground was running in

circles in a field of beet. Great flocks of crows whirled against the gray

sky.

 

Christophe went on dreaming, having no fixed object, but yet instinctively

he was walking in a definite direction. For several weeks his walks round

the town had gravitated whether he liked it or not towards another village

where he was sure to meet a pretty girl who attracted him. It was only an

attraction, but it was very vivid and rather disturbing. Christophe could

hardly do without loving some one; and his heart was rarely left empty;

it always had some lovely image for its idol. Generally it did not matter

whether the idol knew of his love; his need was to love, the fire must

never be allowed to go out; there must never be darkness in his heart.

 

The object of this new flame was the daughter of a peasant whom he had met,

as Eliézer met Rebecca, by a well; but she did not give him to drink; she

threw water in his face. She was kneeling by the edge of a stream in a

hollow in the bank between two willows, the roots of which made a sort of

nest about her; she was washing linen vigorously; and her tongue was not

less active than her arms; she was talking and laughing loudly with other

girls of the village who were washing opposite her or the other side of the

stream. Christophe was lying in the grass a few yards away, and, with his

chin resting in his hands, he watched them. They were not put out by it;

they went on chattering in a style which sometimes did not lack bluntness.

He hardly listened; he heard only the sound of their merry voices, mingling

with the noise of their washing pots, and with the distant lowing of the

cows in the meadows, and he was dreaming, never taking his eyes off the

beautiful washerwoman. A bright young face would make him glad for a whole

day. It was not long before the girls made out which of them he was looking

at; and they made caustic remarks to each other; the girl he preferred was

not the least cutting in the observations she threw at him. As he did not

budge, she got up, took a bundle of linen washed and wrung, and began to

lay it out on the bushes near him so as to have an excuse for looking at

him. As she passed him she continued to splash him with her wet clothes

and she looked at him boldly and laughed. She was thin and strong: she had

a fine chin, a little underhung, a short nose, arching eyebrows, deep-set

blue eyes, bold, bright and hard, a pretty mouth with thick lips, pouting a

little like those of a Greek maid, a mass of fair hair turned up in a knot

on her head, and a full color. She carried her head very erect, tittered at

every word she said and even when she said nothing, and walked like a man,

swinging her sunburned arms. She went on laying out hey linen while she

looked at Christophe with a provoking smile—waiting for him to speak.

Christophe stared at her too; but he had no desire to talk to her. At last

she burst out laughing to his face and turned back towards her companions.

He stayed lying where he was until evening fell and he saw her go with her

bundle on her back and her bare arms crossed, her back bent under her load,

still talking and laughing.

 

He saw her again a few days later at the town market among heaps of carrots

and tomatoes and cucumbers and cabbages. He lounged about watching the

crowd of women, selling, who were standing in a line by their baskets

like slaves for sale. The police official went up to each of them with

his satchel and roll of tickets, receiving a piece of money and giving a

paper. The coffee seller went from row to row with a basket full of little

coffee pots. And an old nun, plump and jovial, went round the market with

two large baskets on her arms and without any sort of humility begged

vegetables, or talked of the good God. The women shouted: the old scales

with their green painted pans jingled and clanked with the noise of their

chains; the big dogs harnessed to the little carts barked loudly, proud of

their importance. In the midst of the rabble Christophe saw Rebecca.—Her

real name was Lorchen (Eleanor).—On her fair hair she had placed a large

cabbage leaf, green and white, which made a dainty lace cap for her. She

was sitting on a basket by a heap of golden onions, little pink turnips,

haricot beans, and ruddy apples, and she was munching her own apples one

after another without trying to sell them. She never stopped eating. From

time to time she would dry her chin and wipe it with her apron, brush back

her hair with her arm, rub her cheek against her shoulder, or her nose with

the back of her hand. Or, with her hands on her knees, she would go on and

on throwing a handful of shelled peas from one to the other. And she would

look to right and left idly and indifferently. But she missed nothing of

what was going on about her. And without seeming to do so she marked every

glance cast in her direction. She saw Christophe. As she talked to her

customers she had a way of raising her eyebrows and looking at her admirer

over their heads. She was as dignified and serious as a Pope; but inwardly

she was laughing at Christophe. And he deserved it; he stood there a few

yards away devouring her with his eyes, then he went away without speaking

to her. He had not the least desire to do so.

 

He came back more than once to prowl round the market and the village where

she lived. She would be about the yard of the farm; he would stop on the

road to look at her. He did not admit that he came to see her, and indeed

he did so almost unconsciously. When, as often happened, he was absorbed by

the composition of some work he would be rather like a somnambulist: while

his conscious soul was following its musical ideas the rest of him would be

delivered up to the other unconscious soul which is forever watching for

the smallest distraction of the mind to take the freedom of the fields. He

was often bewildered by the buzzing of his musical ideas when he was face

to face with her; and he would go on dreaming as he watched her. He could

not have said that he loved her; he did not even think of that; it gave him

pleasure to see her, nothing more. He did not take stock of the desire

which was always bringing him back to her.

 

His insistence was remarked. The people at the farm joked about it, for

they had discovered who Christophe was. But they left him in peace; for he

was quite harmless. He looked silly enough in truth; but he never bothered

about it.

 

*

 

There was a holiday in the village. Little boys were crushing crackers

between stones and shouting “God save the Emperor!” (“_Kaiser lebe!

Hoch!_”). A cow shut up in the barn and the men drinking at the inn were

to be heard. Kites with long tails like comets dipped and swung in the air

above the fields. The fowls were scratching frantically in the straw and

the golden dung-heap; the wind blew out their feathers like the skirts of

an old lady. A pink pig was sleeping voluptuously on his side in the sun.

 

Christophe made his way towards the red roof of the inn of the _Three

Kings_ above which floated a little flag. Strings of onions hung by the

door, and the windows were decorated with red and yellow flowers. He went

into the saloon, filled with tobacco smoke, where yellowing chromos hung on

the walls and in the place of honor a colored portrait of the Emperor-King

surrounded with a wreath of oak leaves. People were dancing. Christophe was

sure his charmer would be there. He sat in a corner of the room from which

he could watch the movement of the dancers undisturbed. But in spite of all

this care to pass unnoticed Lorchen spied him out in his corner. While she

waltzed indefatigably she threw quick glances at him over her partner’s

shoulder to make sure that he was still looking at her; and it amused her

to excite him; she coquetted with the young men of the village, laughing

the while with her wide mouth. She talked a great deal and said silly

things and was not very different from the girls of the polite world who

think they must laugh and move about and play to the gallery when anybody

looks at them, instead of keeping their foolishness to themselves. But they

are not so very foolish either; for they know quite well that the gallery

only looks at them and does not listen to what they say.—With his elbows

on the table and his chin in his hands Christophe watched the girl’s tricks

with burning, furious eyes; his mind was free enough not to be taken in by

her wiles, but he was not enough himself not to be led on by them; and he

growled with rage and he laughed in silence and shrugged his shoulders in

falling into the snare.

 

Not only the girl was watching him; Lorchen’s father also had his eyes

on him. Thick-set and short, bald-headed—a big head with a short

nose—sunburned skull with a fringe of hair that had been fair and hung in

thick curls like Dürer’s St. John, clean-shaven, expressionless face, with

a long pipe in the corner of his mouth, he was talking very deliberately

to some other peasants while all the time he was watching Christophe’s

pantomime out of the corner of