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

a good temper, and

laughed.

 

“You like that, boy?” he asked, patting his head kindly. “Would you like me

to teach you to play it?”

 

Would he like!… Delighted, he murmured: “Yes.” The two of them sat down

at the piano, Jean-Christophe perched this time on a pile of big books, and

very attentively he took his first lesson. He learned first of all that the

buzzing spirits have strange names, like Chinese names, of one syllable, or

even of one letter. He was astonished; he imagined them to be different

from that: beautiful, caressing names, like the princesses in the fairy

stories. He did not like the familiarity with which his father talked of

them. Again, when Melchior evoked them they were not the same; they seemed

to become indifferent as they rolled out from under his fingers. But

Jean-Christophe was glad to learn about the relationships between them,

their hierarchy, the scales, which were like a King commanding an army, or

like a band of negroes marching in single file. He was surprised to see

that each soldier, or each negro, could become a monarch in his turn, or

the head of a similar band, and that it was possible to summon whole

battalions from one end to the other of the keyboard. It amused him to hold

the thread which made them march. But it was a small thing compared with

what he had seen at first; his enchanted forest was lost. However, he set

himself to learn, for it was not tiresome, and he was surprised at his

father’s patience. Melchior did not weary of it either; he made him begin

the same thing over again ten times. Jean-Christophe did not understand why

he should take so much trouble; his father loved him, then? That was good!

The boy worked away; his heart was filled with gratitude.

 

He would have been less docile had he known what thoughts were springing

into being in his father’s head.

 

*

 

From that day on Melchior took him to the house of a neighbor, where three

times a week there was chamber music. Melchior played first violin, Jean

Michel the violoncello. The other two were a bank-clerk and the old

watchmaker of the Schillerstrasse. Every now and then the chemist joined

them with his flute. They began at five, and went on till nine. Between

each piece they drank beer. Neighbors used to come in and out, and listen

without a word, leaning against the wall, and nodding their heads, and

beating time with their feet, and filling the room with clouds of

tobacco-smoke. Page followed page, piece followed piece, but the patience

of the musicians was never exhausted. They did not speak; they were all

attention; their brows were knit, and from time to time they grunted with

pleasure, but for the rest they were perfectly incapable not only of

expressing, but even of feeling, the beauty of what they played. They

played neither very accurately nor in good time, but they never went off

the rails, and followed faithfully the marked changes of tone. They had

that musical facility which is easily satisfied, that mediocre perfection

which, is so plentiful in the race which is said to be the most musical in

the world. They had also that great appetite which does not stickle for the

quality of its food, so only there be quantity—that healthy appetite to

which all music is good, and the more substantial the better—it sees no

difference between Brahms and Beethoven, or between the works of the same

master, between an empty concerto and a moving sonata, because they are

fashioned of the same stuff.

 

Jean-Christophe sat apart in a corner, which was his own, behind the piano.

No one could disturb him there, for to reach it he had to go on all fours.

It was half dark there, and the boy had just room to lie on the floor if he

huddled up. The smoke of the tobacco filled his eyes and throat: dust, too;

there were large flakes of it like sheepskin, but he did not mind that, and

listened gravely, squatting there Turkish fashion, and widening the holes

in the cloth of the piano with his dirty little fingers. He did not like

everything that they played; but nothing that they played bored him, and he

never tried to formulate his opinions, for he thought himself too small to

know anything. Only some music sent him to sleep, some woke him up; it was

never disagreeable to him. Without his knowing it, it was nearly always

good music that excited him. Sure of not being seen, he made faces, he

wrinkled his nose, ground his teeth, or stuck out his tongue; his eyes

flashed with anger or drooped languidly; he moved his arms and legs with a

defiant and valiant air; he wanted to march, to lunge out, to pulverize the

world. He fidgeted so much that in the end a head would peer over the

piano, and say: “Hullo, boy, are you mad? Leave the piano…. Take your

hand away, or I’ll pull your ears!” And that made him crestfallen and

angry. Why did they want to spoil his pleasure? He was not doing any harm.

Must he always be tormented! His father chimed in. They chid him for making

a noise, and said that he did not like music. And in the end he believed

it. These honest citizens grinding out concertos would have been astonished

if they had been told that the only person in the company who really felt

the music was the little boy.

 

If they wanted him to keep quiet, why did they play airs which make you

march? In those pages were rearing horses, swords, war-cries, the pride of

triumph; and they wanted him, like them, to do no more than wag his head

and beat time with his feet! They had only to play placid dreams or some of

those chattering pages which talk so much and say nothing. There are plenty

of them, for example, like that piece of Goldmark’s, of which the old

watchmaker had just said with a delighted smile: “It is pretty. There is no

harshness in it. All the corners are rounded off….” The boy was very

quiet then. He became drowsy. He did not know what they were playing hardly

heard it; but he was happy; his limbs were numbed, and he was dreaming.

 

His dreams were not a consecutive story; they had neither head nor tail. It

was rarely that he saw a definite picture; his mother making a cake, and

with a knife removing the paste that clung to her fingers; a water-rat that

he had seen the night before swimming in the river; a whip that he wanted

to make with a willow wand…. Heaven knows why these things should have

cropped up in his memory at such a time! But most often he saw nothing at

all, and yet he felt things innumerable and infinite. It was as though

there were a number of very important things not to be spoken of, or not

worth speaking of, because they were so well known, and because they had

always been so. Some of them were sad, terribly sad; but there was nothing

painful in them, as there is in the things that belong to real life; they

were not ugly and debasing, like the blows that Jean-Christophe had from

his father, or like the things that were in his head when, sick at heart

with shame, he thought of some humiliation; they filled the mind with a

melancholy calm. And some were bright and shining, shedding torrents of

joy. And Jean-Christophe thought: “Yes, it is thus—thus that I will do

by-and-by.” He did not know exactly what thus was, nor why he said it,

but he felt that he had to say it, and that it was clear as day. He heard

the sound of a sea, and he was quite near to it, kept from it only by a

wall of dunes. Jean-Christophe had no idea what sea it was, or what it

wanted with him, but he was conscious that it would rise above the barrier

of dunes. And then!… Then all would be well, and he would be quite happy.

Nothing to do but to hear it, then, quite near, to sink to sleep to the

sound of its great voice, soothing away all his little griefs and

humiliations. They were sad still, but no longer shameful nor injurious;

everything seemed natural and almost sweet.

 

Very often it was mediocre music that produced this intoxication in him.

The writers of it were poor devils, with no thought in their heads but the

gaining of money, or the hiding away of the emptiness of their lives by

tagging notes together according to accepted formulæ—or to be original, in

defiance of formulæ. But in the notes of music, even when handled by an

idiot, there is such a power of life that they can let loose storms in a

simple soul. Perhaps even the dreams suggested by the idiots are more

mysterious and more free than those breathed by an imperious thought which

drags you along by force; for aimless movement and empty chatter do not

disturb the mind in its own pondering….

 

So, forgotten and forgetting, the child stayed in his corner behind the

piano, until suddenly he felt ants climbing up his legs. And he remembered

then that he was a little boy wife dirty nails, and that he was rubbing his

nose against a white-washed wall, and holding his feet in his hands.

 

On the day when Melchior, stealing on tiptoe, had surprised the boy at the

keyboard that was too high for him, he had stayed to watch him for a

moment, and suddenly there had flashed upon him: “A little prodigy!… Why

had he not thought of it?… What luck for the family!…” No doubt he had

thought that the boy would be a little peasant like his mother. “It would

cost nothing to try. What a great thing it would be! He would take him all

over Germany, perhaps abroad. It would be a jolly life, and noble to boot.”

Melchior never failed to look for the nobility hidden in all he did, for it

was not often that he failed to find it, after some reflection.

 

Strong in this assurance, immediately after supper, as soon as he had taken

his last mouthful, he dumped the child once more in front of the piano, and

made him go through the day’s lesson until his eyes closed in weariness.

Then three times the next day. Then the day after that. Then every day.

Jean-Christophe soon tired of it; then he was sick to death of it; finally

he could stand it no more, and tried to revolt against it. There was no

point in what he was made to do: nothing but learning to run as fast as

possible over the keys, by loosening the thumb, or exercising the fourth

finger, which would cling awkwardly to the two next to it. It got on his

nerves; there was nothing beautiful in it. There was an end of the magic

sounds, and fascinating monsters, and the universe of dreams felt in one

moment…. Nothing but scales and exercises—dry, monotonous, dull—duller

than the conversation at meal-time, which was always the same—always about

the dishes, and always the same dishes. At first the child listened

absently to what his father said. When he was severely reprimanded he went

on with a bad grace. He paid no attention to abuse; he met it with bad

temper. The last straw was when one evening he heard Melchior unfold his

plans in the next room. So it was in order to