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

fixed idea, a Desire unknown, terrible and fascinating as

a flame to an insect. It was the sudden eruption of the blind forces of

Nature.

 

*

 

They passed through a period of waiting. They watched each other, desired

each other, were fearful of each other. They were uneasy. But they did not

for that desist from their little hostilities and sulkinesses; only there

were no more familiarities between them; they were silent. Each was busy

constructing their love in silence.

 

Love has curious retroactive effects. As soon as Jean-Christophe discovered

that he loved Minna, he discovered at the same time that he had always

loved her. For three months they had been seeing each other almost every

day without ever suspecting the existence of their love. But from the day

when he did actually love her, he was absolutely convinced that he had

loved her from all eternity.

 

It was a good thing for him to have discovered at last whom he loved.

He had loved for so long without knowing whom! It was a sort of relief to

him, like a sick man, who, suffering from a general illness, vague and

enervating, sees it become definite in sharp pain in some portion of his

body. Nothing is more wearing than love without a definite object; it eats

away and saps the strength like a fever. A known passion leads the mind to

excess; that is exhausting, but at least one knows why. It is an excess; it

is not a wasting away. Anything rather than emptiness.

 

Although Minna had given Jean-Christophe good reason to believe that she

was not indifferent to him, he did not fail to torture himself with the

idea that she despised him. They had never had any very clear idea of each

other, but this idea had never been more confused and false than it was

now; it consisted of a series of strange fantasies which could never be

made to agree, for they passed from one extreme to the other, endowing each

other in turn with faults and charms which they did not possess—charms

when they were parted, faults when they were together. In either case they

were wide of the mark.

 

They did not know themselves what they desired. For Jean-Christophe his

love took shape as that thirst for tenderness, imperious, absolute,

demanding reciprocation, which had burned in him since childhood,

which he demanded from others, and wished to impose on them by will or

force. Sometimes this despotic desire of full sacrifice of himself and

others—especially others, perhaps—was mingled with gusts of a brutal

and obscure desire, which set him whirling, and he did not understand it.

Minna, curious above all things, and delighted to have a romance, tried

to extract as much pleasure as possible from it for her vanity and

sentimentality; she tricked herself wholeheartedly as to what she was

feeling. A great part of their love was purely literary. They fed on the

books they had read, and were forever ascribing to themselves feelings

which they did not possess.

 

But the moment was to come when all these little lies and small egoisms

were to vanish away before the divine light of love. A day, an hour, a few

seconds of eternity…. And it was so unexpected!…

 

*

 

One evening they were alone and talking. The room was growing dark. Their

conversation took a serious turn. They talked of the infinite, of Life, and

Death. It made a larger frame for their little passion. Minna complained of

her loneliness, which led naturally to Jean-Christophe’s answer that she

was not so lonely as she thought.

 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That is only words. Every one lives for

himself; no one is interested in you; nobody loves you.”

 

Silence.

 

“And I?” said Jean-Christophe suddenly, pale with emotion.

 

Impulsive Minna jumped to her feet, and took his hands.

 

The door opened. They flung apart. Frau von Kerich entered. Jean-Christophe

buried himself in a book, which he held upside down. Minna bent over her

work, and pricked her finger with her needle.

 

They were not alone together for the rest of the evening, and they were

afraid of being left. When Frau von Kerich got up to look for something in

the next room, Minna, not usually obliging, ran to fetch it for her, and

Jean-Christophe took advantage of her absence to take his leave without

saying goodnight to her.

 

Next day they met again, impatient to resume their interrupted

conversation. They did not succeed. Yet circumstances were favorable to

them. They went a walk with Frau von Kerich, and had plenty of opportunity

for talking as much as they liked. But Jean-Christophe could not speak, and

he was so unhappy that he stayed as far away as possible from Minna. And

she pretended not to notice his discourtesy; but she was piqued by it, and

showed it. When Jean-Christophe did at last contrive to utter a few words,

she listened icily; he had hardly the courage to finish his sentence. They

were coming to the end of the walk. Time was flying. And he was wretched at

not having been able to make use of it.

 

A week passed. They thought they had mistaken their feeling for each other.

They were not sure but that they had dreamed the scene of that evening.

Minna was resentful against Jean-Christophe. Jean-Christophe was afraid of

meeting her alone. They were colder to each other than ever.

 

A day came when it had rained all morning and part of the afternoon. They

had stayed in the house without speaking, reading, yawning, looking out of

the window; they were bored and cross. About four o’clock the sky cleared.

They ran into the garden. They leaned their elbows on the terrace wall,

and looked down at the lawns sloping to the river. The earth was steaming;

a soft mist was ascending to the sun; little rain-drops glittered on

the grass; the smell of the damp earth and the perfume of the flowers

intermingled; around them buzzed a golden swarm of bees. They were side by

side, not looking at each other; they could not bring themselves to break

the silence. A bee came up and clung awkwardly to a clump of wistaria heavy

with rain, and sent a shower of water down on them. They both laughed, and

at once they felt that they were no longer cross with each other, and were

friends again. But still they did not look at each other. Suddenly, without

turning her head, she took his hand, and said:

 

“Come!”

 

She led him quickly to the little labyrinth with its box-bordered paths,

which was in the middle of the grove. They climbed up the slope, slipping

on the soaking ground, and the wet trees shook out their branches over

them. Near the top she stopped to breathe.

 

“Wait … wait …” she said in a low voice, trying to take breath.

 

He looked at her. She was looking away; she was smiling, breathing hard,

with her lips parted; her hand was trembling in Jean-Christophe’s. They

felt the blood throbbing in their linked hands and their trembling fingers.

Around them all was silent. The pale shoots of the trees were quivering in

the sun; a gentle rain dropped from the leaves with silvery sounds, and in

the sky were the shrill cries of swallows.

 

She turned her head towards him; it was a lightning flash. She flung her

arms about his neck; he flung himself into her arms.

 

“Minna! Minna! My darling!…”

 

“I love you, Jean Christophe! I love you!”

 

They sat on a wet wooden seat. They were filled with love, sweet, profound,

absurd. Everything else had vanished. No more egoism, no more vanity, no

more reservation. Love, love—that is what their laughing, tearful eyes

were saying. The cold coquette of a girl, the proud boy, were devoured with

the need of self-sacrifice, of giving, of suffering, of dying for each

other. They did not know each other; they were not the same; everything was

changed; their hearts, their faces, their eyes, gave out a radiance of the

most touching kindness and tenderness. Moments of purity, of self-denial,

of absolute giving of themselves, which through life will never return!

 

After a desperate murmuring of words and passionate promises to belong to

each other forever, after kisses and incoherent words of delight, they saw

that it was late, and they ran back hand in hand, almost falling in the

narrow paths, bumping into trees, feeling nothing, blind and drunk with the

joy of it.

 

When he left her he did not go home; he could not have gone to sleep. He

left the town, and walked over the fields; he walked blindly through the

night. The air was fresh, the country dark and deserted. A screech-owl

hooted shrilly. Jean-Christophe went on like a sleep-walker. The little

lights of the town quivered on the plain, and the stars in the dark sky. He

sat on a wall by the road and suddenly burst into tears. He did not know

why. He was too happy, and the excess of his joy was compounded of sadness

and delight; there was in it thankfulness for his happiness, pity for

those who were not happy, a melancholy and sweet feeling of the frailty of

things, the mad joy of living. He wept for delight, and slept in the midst

of his tears. When he awoke dawn was peeping. White mists floated over the

river, and veiled the town, where Minna, worn out; was sleeping, while in

her heart was the light of her smile of happiness.

 

*

 

They contrived to meet again in the garden next morning and told their love

once more, but now the divine unconsciousness of it all was gone. She was a

little playing the part of the girl in love, and he, though more sincere,

was also playing a part. They talked of what their life should be. He

regretted his poverty and humble estate. She affected to be generous, and

enjoyed her generosity. She said that she cared nothing for money. That was

true, for she knew nothing about it, having never known the lack of it. He

promised that he would become a great artist; that she thought fine and

amusing, like a novel. She thought it her duty to behave really like a

woman in love. She read poetry; she was sentimental. He was touched by the

infection. He took pains with his dress; he was absurd; he set a guard upon

his speech; he was pretentious. Frau von Kerich watched him and laughed,

and asked herself what could have made him so stupid.

 

But they had moments of marvelous poetry, and these would suddenly burst

upon them out of dull days, like sunshine through a mist. A look, a

gesture, a meaningless word, and they were bathed in happiness; they had

their good-byes in the evening on the dimly-lighted stairs, and their eyes

would seek each other, divine each other through the half darkness, and the

thrill of their hands as they touched, the trembling in their voices, all

those little nothings that fed their memory at night, as they slept so

lightly that the chiming of each hour would awake them, and their hearts

would sing “I am loved,” like the murmuring of a stream.

 

They discovered the charm of things. Spring smiled with a marvelous

sweetness. The heavens were brilliant, the air was soft, as they had never

been before. All the town—the red roofs, the old walls, the cobbled

streets—showed with a kindly charm that moved Jean-Christophe. At night,

when everybody was asleep,