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

>thing?” Then he laughs again, and perhaps he makes an effort to laugh

because he has an audience. His mamma looks severe, and lays a finger on

her lips to warn him lest he should wake his father: but her weary eyes

smile in spite of herself. They whisper together. Then there is a furious

growl from his father. Both tremble. His mother hastily turns her back on

him, like a naughty little girl: she pretends to be asleep. Jean-Christophe

buries himself in his bed, and holds his breath…. Dead silence.

 

After some time the little face hidden under the clothes comes to the

surface again. On the roof the weathercock creaks. The rain-pipe gurgles;

the Angelus sounds. When the wind comes from the east, the distant bells

of the villages on the other bank of the river give answer. The sparrows

foregathered in the ivy-clad wall make a deafening noise, from which three

or four voices, always the same, ring out more shrilly than the others,

just as in the games of a band of children. A pigeon coos at the top of a

chimney. The child abandons himself to the lullaby of these sounds. He hums

to himself softly, then a little more loudly, then quite loudly, then very

loudly, until once more his father cries out in exasperation: “That little

donkey never will be quiet! Wait a little, and I’ll pull your ears!” Then

Jean-Christophe buries himself in the bedclothes again, and does not know

whether to laugh or cry. He is terrified and humiliated; and at the same

time the idea of the donkey with which his father has compared him makes

him burst out laughing. From the depths of his bed he imitates its braying.

This time he is whipped. He sheds every tear that is in him. What has he

done? He wanted so much to laugh and to get up! And he is forbidden to

budge. How do people sleep forever? When will they get up?…

 

One day he could not contain himself. He heard a cat and a dog and

something queer in the street. He slipped out of bed, and, creeping

awkwardly with his bare feet on the tiles, he tried to go down the stairs

to see what it was; but the door was shut. To open it, he climbed on to

a chair; the whole thing collapsed, and he hurt himself and howled. And

once more at the top of the stairs he was whipped. He is always being

whipped!…

 

*

 

He is in church with his grandfather. He is bored. He is not very

comfortable. He is forbidden to stir, and all the people are saying all

together words that he does not understand. They all look solemn and

gloomy. It is not their usual way of looking. He looks at them, half

frightened. Old Lena, their neighbor, who is sitting next to him, looks

very cross; there are moments when he does not recognize even his

grandfather. He is afraid a little. Then he grows used to it, and tries to

find relief from boredom by every means at his disposal. He balances on

one leg, twists his neck to look at the ceiling, makes faces, pulls his

grandfather’s coat, investigates the straws in his chair, tries to make a

hole in them with his finger, listens to the singing of birds, and yawns so

that he is like to dislocate his jaw.

 

Suddenly there is a deluge of sound; the organ is played. A thrill goes

down his spine. He turns and stands with his chin resting on the back of

his chair, and he looks very wise. He does not understand this noise; he

does not know the meaning of it; it is dazzling, bewildering, and he can

hear nothing clearly. But it is good. It is as though he were no longer

sitting there on an uncomfortable chair in a tiresome old house. He is

suspended in mid-air, like a bird; and when the flood of sound rushes from

one end of the church to the other, filling the arches, reverberating

from wall to wall, he is carried with it, flying and skimming hither and

thither, with nothing to do but to abandon himself to it. He is free; he is

happy. The sun shines…. He falls asleep.

 

His grandfather is displeased with him. He behaves ill at Mass.

 

*

 

He is at home, sitting on the ground, with his feet in his hands. He has

just decided that the door-mat is a boat, and the tiled floor a river. He

all but drowned in stepping off the carpet. He is surprised and a little

put out that the others pay no attention to the matter as he does when he

goes into the room. He seizes his mother by the skirts. “You see it is

water! You must go across by the bridge.” (The bridge is a series of holes

between the red tiles.) His mother crosses without even listening to him.

He is vexed, as a dramatic author is vexed when he sees his audience

talking during his great work.

 

Next moment he thinks no more of it. The tiled floor is no longer the sea.

He is lying down on it, stretched full-length, with his chin on the tiles,

humming music of his own composition, and gravely sucking his thumb and

dribbling. He is lost in contemplation of a crack between the tiles. The

lines of the tiles grimace like faces. The imperceptible hole grows larger,

and becomes a valley; there are mountains about it. A centipede moves: it

is as large as an elephant. Thunder might crash, the child would not hear

it.

 

No one bothers about him, and he has no need of any one. He can even do

without door-mat boats, and caverns in the tiled floor, with their

fantastic fauna. His body is enough. What a source of entertainment! He

spends hours in looking at his nails and shouting with laughter. They have

all different faces, and are like people that he knows. And the rest of

his body!… He goes on with the inspection of all that he has. How many

surprising things! There are so many marvels. He is absorbed in looking at

them.

 

But he was very roughly picked up when they caught him at it.

 

*

 

Sometimes he takes advantage of his mother’s back being turned, to escape

from the house. At first they used to run after him and bring him back.

Then they got used to letting him go alone, only so he did not go too

far away. The house is at the end of the town; the country begins almost

at once. As long as he is within sight of the windows he goes without

stopping, very deliberately, and now and then hopping on one foot. But as

soon as he has passed the corner of the road, and the brushwood hides him

from view, he changes abruptly. He stops there, with his finger in his

mouth, to find out what story he shall tell himself that day; for he is

full of stories. True, they are all very much like each other, and every

one of them could be told in a few lines. He chooses. Generally he takes up

the same story, sometimes from the point where it left off, sometimes from

the beginning, with variations. But any trifle—a word heard by chance—is

enough to set his mind off on another direction.

 

Chance was fruitful of resources. It is impossible to imagine what can be

made of a simple piece of wood, a broken bough found alongside a hedge.

(You break them off when you do not find them.) It was a magic wand. If it

were long and thin, it became a lance, or perhaps a sword; to brandish it

aloft was enough to cause armies to spring from the earth. Jean-Christophe

was their general, marching in front of them, setting them an example, and

leading them to the assault of a hillock. If the branch were flexible,

it changed into a whip. Jean-Christophe mounted on horseback and leaped

precipices. Sometimes his mount would slip, and the horseman would find

himself at the bottom of the ditch, sorrily looking at his dirty hands

and barked knees. If the wand were lithe, then Jean-Christophe would make

himself the conductor of an orchestra: he would be both conductor and

orchestra; he conducted and he sang; and then he would salute the bushes,

with their little green heads stirring in the wind.

 

He was also a magician. He walked with great strides through the fields,

looking at the sky and waving his arms. He commanded the clouds. He wished

them to go to the right, but they went to the left. Then he would abuse

them, and repeat his command. He would watch them out of the corner of his

eye, and his heart would beat as he looked to see if there were not at

least a little one which would obey him. But they went on calmly moving to

the left. Then he would stamp his foot, and threaten them with his stick,

and angrily order them to go to the left; and this time, in truth, they

obeyed him. He was happy and proud of his power. He would touch the flowers

and bid them change into golden carriages, as he had been told they did in

the stories; and, although it never happened, he was quite convinced that

it would happen if only he had patience. He would look for a grasshopper to

turn into a hare; he would gently lay his stick on its back, and speak a

rune. The insect would escape: he would bar its way. A few moments later he

would be lying on his belly near to it, looking at it. Then he would have

forgotten that he was a magician, and just amuse himself with turning the

poor beast on its back, while he laughed aloud at its contortions.

 

It occurred to him also to tie a piece of string to his magic wand, and

gravely cast it into the river, and wait for a fish to come and bite. He

knew perfectly well that fish do not usually bite at a piece of string

without bait or hook; but he thought that for once in a way, and for him,

they might make an exception to their rule; and in his inexhaustible

confidence, he carried it so far as to fish in the street with a whip

through the grating of a sewer. He would draw up the whip from time to time

excitedly, pretending that the cord of it was more heavy, and that he had

caught a treasure, as in a story that his grandfather had told him….

 

And always in the middle of all these games there used to occur to him

moments of strange dreaming and complete forgetfulness. Everything about

him would then be blotted out; he would not know what he was doing, and

was not even conscious of himself. These attacks would take him unawares.

Sometimes as he walked or went upstairs a void would suddenly open before

him. He would seem then to have lost all thought. But when he came back

to himself, he was shocked and bewildered to find himself in the same

place on the dark staircase. It was as though he had lived through a whole

lifetime—in the space of a few steps.

 

His grandfather used often to take him with him on his evening walk. The

little boy used to trot by his side and give him his hand. They used to

go by the roads, across plowed fields, which