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

>love…. There is suffering. There is the bringing of suffering. And the

most wretched is not always the one who suffers.

 

*

 

Once more Christophe took to avoiding the house. He could not bear it. He

could not bear to see the curtainless windows, the empty rooms.

 

A worse sorrow awaited him. Old Euler lost no time in reletting the ground

floor. One day Christophe saw strange faces in Sabine’s room. New lives

blotted out the traces of the life that was gone.

 

It became impossible for him to stay in his rooms. He passed whole

days outside, not coming back until nightfall, when it was too dark to

see anything. Once more he took to making expeditions in the country.

Irresistibly he was drawn to Bertold’s farm. But he never went in, dared

not go near it, wandered about it at a distance. He discovered a place on

a hill from which he could see the house, the plain, the river: it was

thither that his steps usually turned. From thence he could follow with his

eyes the meanderings of the water down to the willow clump under which he

had seen the shadow of death pass across Sabine’s face. From thence he

could pick out the two windows of the rooms in which they had waited,

side by side, so near, so far, separated by a door—the door to eternity.

From thence he could survey the cemetery. He had never been able to bring

himself to enter it: from childhood he had had a horror of those fields

of decay and corruption, and refused to think of those whom he loved in

connection with them. But from a distance and seen from above, the little

graveyard never looked grim, it was calm, it slept with the sun….

Sleep!… She loved to sleep! Nothing would disturb her there. The crowing

cocks answered each other across the plains. From the homestead rose

the roaring of the mill, the clucking of the poultry yard, the cries of

children playing. He could make out Sabine’s little girl, he could see her

running, he could mark her laughter. Once he lay in wait for her near the

gate of the farmyard, in a turn of the sunk road made by the walls: he

seized her as she passed and kissed her. The child was afraid and began, to

cry. She had almost forgotten him already. He asked her:

 

“Are you happy here?”

 

“Yes. It is fun….”

 

“You don’t want to come back?”

 

“No!”

 

He let her go. The child’s indifference plunged him in sorrow. Poor

Sabine!… And yet it was she, something of her…. So little! The child

was hardly at all like her mother: had lived in her, but was not she: in

that mysterious passage through her being the child had hardly retained

more than the faintest perfume of the creature who was gone: inflections of

her voice, a pursing of the lips, a trick of bending the head. The rest of

her was another being altogether: and that being mingled with the being of

Sabine was repulsive to Christophe though he never admitted it to himself.

 

It was only in himself that Christophe could find the image of Sabine.

It followed him everywhere, hovering above him; but he only felt himself

really to be with her when he was alone. Nowhere was she nearer to him than

in this refuge, on the hill, far from strange eyes, in the midst of the

country that was so full of the memory of her. He would go miles to it,

climbing at a run, his heart beating as though he were going to a meeting

with her: and so it was indeed. When he reached it he would lie on the

ground—the same earth in which her body was laid: he would close his

eyes: and she would come to him. He could not see her face: he could

not hear her voice; he had no need: she entered into him, held him, he

possessed her utterly. In this state of passionate hallucination he would

lose the power of thought, he would be unconscious of what was happening:

he was unconscious of everything save that he was with her.

 

That state of things did not last long.—To tell the truth he was only

once altogether sincere. From the day following, his will had its share in

the proceedings. And from that time on Christophe tried in vain to bring

it back to life. It was only then that he thought of evoking in himself

the face and form of Sabine: until then he had never thought of it. He

succeeded spasmodically and he was fired by it. But it was only at the cost

of hours of waiting and of darkness.

 

“Poor Sabine!” he would think. “They have all forgotten you. There is only

I who love you, who keep your memory alive forever. Oh, my treasure, my

precious! I have you, I hold you, I will never let you go!…”

 

He spoke these words because already she was escaping him: she was slipping

from his thoughts like water through his fingers. He would return again and

again, faithful to the tryst. He wished to think of her and he would close

his eyes. But after half an hour, or an hour, or sometimes two hours, he

would begin to see that he had been thinking of nothing. The sounds of the

valley, the roar of the wind, the little bells of the two goats browsing on

the hill, the noise of the wind in the little slender trees under which he

lay, were sucked up by his thoughts soft and porous like a sponge. He was

angry with his thoughts: they tried to obey him, and to fix the vanished

image to which he was striving to attach his life: but his thoughts fell

back weary and chastened and once more with a sigh of comfort abandoned

themselves to the listless stream of sensations.

 

He shook off his torpor. He strode through the country hither and thither

seeking Sabine. He sought her in the mirror that once had held her smile.

He sought her by the river bank where her hands had dipped in the water.

But the mirror and the water gave him only the reflection of himself. The

excitement of walking, the fresh air, the beating of his own healthy blood

awoke music in him once more. He wished to find change.

 

“Oh! Sabine!…” he sighed.

 

He dedicated his songs to her: he strove to call her to life in his music,

his love, and his sorrow…. In vain: love and sorrow came to life surely:

but poor Sabine had no share in them. Love and sorrow looked towards the

future, not towards the past. Christophe was powerless against his youth.

The sap of life swelled up again in him with new vigor. His grief, his

regrets, his chaste and ardent love, his baffled desires, heightened the

fever that was in him. In spite of his sorrow, his heart beat in lively,

sturdy rhythm: wild songs leaped forth in mad, intoxicated strains:

everything in him hymned life and even sadness took on a festival shape.

Christophe was too frank to persist in self-deception: and he despised

himself. But life swept him headlong: and in his sadness, with death in his

heart, and life in all his limbs, he abandoned himself to the forces

newborn in him, to the absurd, delicious joy of living, which grief, pity,

despair, the aching wound of an irreparable loss, all the torment of death,

can only sharpen and kindle into being in the strong, as they rowel their

sides with furious spur.

 

And Christophe knew that, in himself, in the secret hidden depths of his

soul, he had an inaccessible and inviolable sanctuary where lay the shadow

of Sabine. That the flood of life could not bear away…. Each of us bears

in his soul as it were a little graveyard of those whom he has loved. They

sleep there, through the years, untroubled. But a day cometh,—this we

know,—when the graves shall reopen. The dead issue from the tomb and smile

with their pale lips—loving, always—on the beloved, and the lover, in

whose breast their memory dwells, like the child sleeping in the mother’s

womb.

III ADA

After the wet summer the autumn was radiant. In the orchards the trees were

weighed down with fruit The red apples shone like billiard balls. Already

some of the trees were taking on their brilliant garb of the falling year:

flame color, fruit color, color of ripe melon, of oranges and lemons, of

good cooking, and fried dishes. Misty lights glowed through the woods: and

from the meadows there rose the little pink flames of the saffron.

 

He was going down a hill. It was a Sunday afternoon. He was striding,

almost running, gaining speed down the slope. He was singing a phrase, the

rhythm of which had been obsessing him all through his walk. He was red,

disheveled: he was walking, swinging his arms, and rolling his eyes like a

madman, when as he turned a bend in the road he came suddenly on a fair

girl perched on a wall tugging with all her might at a branch of a tree

from which she was greedily plucking and eating purple plums. Their

astonishment was mutual. She looked at him, stared, with her mouth full.

Then she burst out laughing. So did he. She was good to see, with her round

face framed in fair curly hair, which was like a sunlit cloud about her,

her full pink cheeks, her wide blue eyes, her rather large nose,

impertinently turned up, her little red mouth showing white teeth—the

canine little, strong, and projecting—her plump chin, and her full figure,

large and plump, well built, solidly put together. He called out:

 

“Good eating!” And was for going on his road. But she called to him:

 

“Sir! Sir! Will you be very nice? Help me to get down. I can’t….”

 

He returned and asked her how she had climbed up.

 

“With my hands and feet…. It is easy enough to get up….”

 

“Especially when there are tempting plums hanging above your head….”

 

“Yes…. But when you have eaten your courage goes. You can’t find the way

to get down.”

 

He looked at her on her perch. He said:

 

“You are all right there. Stay there quietly. I’ll come and see you

to-morrow. Goodnight!”

 

But he did not budge, and stood beneath her. She pretended to be afraid,

and begged him with little glances not to leave her. They stayed looking at

each other and laughing. She showed him the branch to which she was

clinging and asked:

 

“Would you like some?”

 

Respect for property had not developed in Christophe since the days of his

expeditions with Otto: he accepted without hesitation. She amused herself

with pelting him with plums. When he had eaten she said:

 

“Now!…”

 

He took a wicked pleasure in keeping her waiting. She grew impatient on her

wall. At last he said:

 

“Come, then!” and held his hand up to her.

 

But just as she was about to jump down she thought a moment.

 

“Wait! We must make provision first!”

 

She gathered the finest plums within reach and filled the front of her

blouse with them.

 

“Carefully! Don’t crush them!”

 

He felt almost inclined to do so.

 

She lowered herself from the wall and jumped into his arms. Although he was

sturdy he bent under her weight and all but dragged her down. They were of

the same height. Their faces came together. He kissed her lips, moist