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

be comforted for a moment. He had once more a flicker of

consciousness. His heavy eyes, the pupils of which seemed to move

aimlessly, met those of the boy frozen in his fear. They lit up. The old

man tried to smile and speak. Louisa took Jean-Christophe and led him to

the bedside. Jean Michel moved his lips, and tried to caress his head with

his hand, but then he fell back into his torpor. It was the end.

 

They sent the children into the next room, but they had too much to do to

worry about them, and Jean-Christophe, under the attraction of the horror

of it, peeped through the half-open door at the tragic face on the pillow;

the man strangled by the firm, clutch that had him by the neck; the face

which grew ever more hollow as he watched; the sinking of the creature into

the void, which seemed to suck it down like a pump; and the horrible

death-rattle, the mechanical breathing, like a bubble of air bursting on

the surface of waters; the last efforts of the body, which strives to live

when the soul is no longer. Then the head fell on one side on the pillow.

All, all was silence.

 

A few moments later, in the midst of the sobs and prayers and the confusion

caused by the death, Louisa saw the child, pale, wide-eyed, with gaping

mouth, clutching convulsively at the handle of the door. She ran to him. He

had a seizure in her arms. She carried him away. He lost consciousness. He

woke up to find himself in his bed. He howled in terror, because he had

been left alone for a moment, had another seizure, and fainted again. For

the rest of the night and the next day he was in a fever. Finally, he grew

calm, and on the next night fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until the

middle of the following day. He felt that some one was walking in his room,

that his mother was leaning over his bed and kissing him. He thought he

heard the sweet distant sound of bells. But he would not stir; he was in a

dream.

 

When he opened his eyes again his Uncle Gottfried was sitting at the foot

of his bed. Jean-Christophe was worn out, and could remember nothing. Then

his memory returned, and: he began to weep. Gottfried got up and kissed

him.

 

“Well, my boy—well?” he said gently.

 

“Oh, uncle, uncle!” sobbed the boy, clinging to him.

 

“Cry, then …” said Gottfried. “Cry!”

 

He also was weeping.

 

When he was a little comforted Jean-Christophe dried his eyes and looked at

Gottfried. Gottfried understood that he wanted to ask something.

 

“No,” he said, putting a finger to his lips, “you must not talk. It is good

to cry, bad to talk.”

 

The boy insisted.

 

“It is no good.”

 

“Only one thing—only one!…”

 

“What?”

 

Jean-Christophe hesitated.

 

“Oh, uncle!” he asked, “where is he now?”

 

Gottfried answered:

 

“He is with the Lord, my boy.”

 

But that was not what Jean-Christophe had asked.

 

“No; you do not understand. Where is he—he himself?” (He meant the

body.)

 

He went on in a trembling voice:

 

“Is he still in the house?”

 

“They buried the good man this morning,” said Gottfried. “Did you not hear

the bells?”

 

Jean-Christophe was comforted. Then, when he thought that he would never

see his beloved grandfather again, he wept once more bitterly.

 

“Poor little beast!” said Gottfried, looking pityingly at the child.

 

Jean-Christophe expected Gottfried to console him, but Gottfried made no

attempt to do so, knowing that it was useless.

 

“Uncle Gottfried,” asked the boy, “are not you afraid of it, too?”

 

(Much did he wish that Gottfried should not have been afraid, and would

tell him the secret of it!)

 

“‘Ssh!” he said, in a troubled voice….

 

“And how is one not to be afraid?” he said, after a moment. “But what can

one do? It is so. One must put up with it.”

 

Jean-Christophe shook his head in protest.

 

“One has to put up with it, my boy,” said Gottfried. “He ordered it up

yonder. One has to love what He has ordered.”

 

“I hate Him!” said Jean-Christophe, angrily shaking his fist at the sky.

 

Gottfried fearfully bade him be silent. Jean-Christophe himself was afraid

of what he had just said, and he began to pray with Gottfried. But blood

boiled, and as he repeated the words of servile humility and resignation

there was in his inmost heart a feeling of passionate revolt and horror of

the abominable thing and the monstrous Being who had been able to create

it.

 

Days passed and nights of rain over the freshly-turned earth under which

lay the remains of poor old Jean Michel. At the moment Melchior wept and

cried and sobbed much, but the week was not out before Jean-Christophe

heard him laughing heartily. When the name of the dead man was pronounced

in his presence, his face grew longer and a lugubrious expression came into

it, but in a moment he would begin to talk and gesticulate excitedly. He

was sincerely afflicted, but it was impossible for him to remain sad for

long.

 

Louisa, passive and resigned, accepted the misfortune as she accepted

everything. She added a prayer to her daily prayers; she went regularly to

the cemetery, and cared for the grass as if it were part of her household.

 

Gottfried paid touching attention to the little patch of ground where the

old man slept. When he came to the neighborhood, he brought a little

souvenir—a cross that he had made, or flowers that Jean Michel had loved.

He never missed, even if he were only in the town for a few hours, and he

did it by stealth.

 

Sometimes Louisa took Jean-Christophe with her on her visits to the

cemetery. Jean-Christophe revolted in disgust against the fat patch of

earth clad in its sinister adornment of flowers and trees, and against the

heavy scent which mounts to the sun, mingling with the breath of the

sonorous cypress. But he dared not confess his disgust, because he

condemned it in himself as cowardly and impious. He was very unhappy. His

grandfather’s death haunted him incessantly, and yet he had long known what

death was, and had thought about it and been afraid of it. But he had never

before seen it, and he who sees it for the first time learns that he knew

nothing, neither of death nor of life. One moment brings everything

tottering. Reason is of no avail. You thought you were alive, you thought

you had some experience of life; you see then that you knew nothing, that

you have been living in a veil of illusions spun by your own mind to hide

from your eyes the awful countenance of reality. There is no connection

between the idea of suffering and the creature who bleeds and suffers.

There is no connection between the idea of death and the convulsions of

body and soul in combat and in death. Human language, human wisdom, are

only a puppet-show of stiff mechanical dolls by the side of the grim charm

of reality and the creatures of mind and blood, whose desperate and vain

efforts are strained to the fixing of a life which crumbles away with every

day.

 

Jean-Christophe thought of death day and night. Memories of the last agony

pursued him. He heard that horrible breathing; every night, whatever he

might be doing, he saw his grandfather again. All Nature was changed; it

seemed as though there were an icy vapor drawn over her. Round him,

everywhere, whichever way he turned, he felt upon his face the fatal

breathing of the blind, all-powerful Beast; he felt himself in the grip of

that fearful destructive Form, and he felt that there was nothing to be

done. But, far from crushing him, the thought of it set him aflame with

hate and indignation. He was never resigned to it. He butted head down

against the impossible; it mattered nothing that he broke his head, and was

forced to realize that he was not the stronger. He never ceased to revolt

against suffering. From that time on his life was an unceasing struggle

against the savagery of a Fate which he could not admit.

 

The very misery of his life afforded him relief from the obsession of his

thoughts. The ruin of his family, which only Jean Michel had withheld,

proceeded apace when he was removed. With him the Kraffts had lost their

chief means of support, and misery entered the house.

 

Melchior increased it. Far from working more, he abandoned himself utterly

to his vice when he was free of the only force that had held him in check.

Almost every night he returned home drunk, and he never brought back his

earnings. Besides, he had lost almost all his lessons. One day he had

appeared at the house of one of his pupils in a state of complete

intoxication, and, as a consequence of this scandal, all doors were closed

to him. He was only tolerated in the orchestra out of regard for the memory

of his father, but Louisa trembled lest he should he dismissed any day

after a scene. He had already been threatened with it on several evenings

when he had turned up in his place about the end of the performance.

 

Twice or thrice he had forgotten altogether to put in an appearance. And of

what was he not capable in those moments of stupid excitement when he was

taken with the itch to do and say idiotic things! Had he not taken it into

his head one evening to try and play his great violin concerto in the

middle of an act of the Valkyrie? They were hard put to it to stop him.

Sometimes, too, he would shout with laughter in the middle of a performance

at the amusing pictures that were presented on the stage or whirling in his

own brain. He was a joy to his colleagues, and they passed over many things

because he was so funny. But such indulgence was worse than severity, and

Jean-Christophe could have died for shame.

 

The boy was now first violin in the orchestra. He sat so that he could

watch over his father, and, when necessary, beseech him, and make him be

silent. It was not easy, and the best thing was not to pay any attention

to him, for if he did, as soon as the sot felt that eyes were upon

him, he would take to making faces or launch out into a speech. Then

Jean-Christophe would turn away, trembling with fear lest he should commit

some outrageous prank. He would try to be absorbed in his work, but he

could not help hearing Melchior’s utterances and the laughter of his

colleagues. Tears would come into his eyes. The musicians, good fellows

that they were, had seen that, and were sorry for him. They would hush

their laughter, and only talk about his father when Jean-Christophe was not

by. But Jean-Christophe was conscious of their pity. He knew that as soon

as he had gone their jokes would break out again, and that Melchior was the

laughing-stock of the town. He could not stop him, and he was in torment.

He used to bring his father home after the play. He would take his arm, put

up with his pleasantries, and try to conceal the stumbling in his walk. But

he deceived no one, and in spite of all his efforts it was very rarely that

he could succeed in leading Melchior all the