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

They sat on the bed and embraced in

silence.

 

*

 

The flickering light of the garden is dead. All is dead…. Night…. The

abyss…. Neither light nor consciousness…. Being. The obscure, devouring

forces of Being. Joy all-powerful. Joy rending. Joy which sucks down the

human creature as the void a stone. The sprout of desire sucking up

thought. The absurd delicious law of the blind intoxicated worlds which

roll at night….

 

… A night which is many nights, hours that are centuries, records which

are death…. Dreams shared, words spoken with eyes closed, tears and

laughter, the happiness of loving in the voice, of sharing the nothingness

of sleep, the swiftly passing images flouting in the brain, the

hallucinations of the roaring night…. The Rhine laps in a little creek by

the house; in the distance his waters over the dams and breakwaters make a

sound as of a gentle rain falling on sand. The hull of the boat cracks and

groans under the weight of water. The chain by which it is tied sags and

grows taut with a rusty clattering. The voice of the river rises: it fills

the room. The bed is like a boat. They are swept along side by side by a

giddy current—hung in mid-air like a soaring bird. The night grows ever

more dark, the void more empty. Ada weeps, Christophe loses consciousness:

both are swept down under the flowing waters of the night….

 

Night…. Death…. Why wake to life again?…

 

The light of the dawning day peeps through the dripping panes. The spark of

life glows once more in their languorous bodies. He awakes, Ada’s eyes are

looking at him. A whole life passes in a few moments: days of sin,

greatness, and peace….

 

“Where am I? And am I two? Do I still exist? I am no longer conscious of

being. All about me is the infinite: I have the soul of a statue, with

large tranquil eyes, filled with Olympian peace….”

 

They fall back into the world of sleep. And the familiar sounds of the

dawn, the distant bells, a passing boat, oars dripping water, footsteps on

the road, all caress without disturbing their happy sleep, reminding them

that they are alive, and making them delight in the savor of their

happiness….

 

*

 

The puffing of the steamer outside the window brought Christophe from his

torpor. They had agreed to leave at seven so as to return to the town in

time for their usual occupations. He whispered:

 

“Do you hear?”

 

She did not open her eyes; she smiled, she put out her lips, she tried to

kiss him and then let her head fall back on his shoulder…. Through the

window panes he saw the funnel of the steamer slip by against the sky, he

saw the empty deck, and clouds of smoke. Once more he slipped into

dreaminess….

 

An hour passed without his knowing it. He heard it strike and started in

astonishment.

 

“Ada!…” he whispered to the girl. “Ada!” he said again. “It’s eight

o’clock.”

 

Her eyes were still closed: she frowned and pouted pettishly.

 

“Oh! let me sleep!” she said.

 

She sighed wearily and turned her back on him and went to sleep once more.

 

He began to dream. His blood ran bravely, calmly through him. His limpid

senses received the smallest impressions simply and freshly. He rejoiced in

his strength and youth. Unwittingly he was proud of being a man. He smiled

in his happiness, and felt himself alone: alone as he had always been, more

lonely even but without sadness, in a divine solitude. No more fever. “No

more shadows. Nature could freely cast her reflection upon his soul in its

serenity. Lying on his back, facing the window, his eyes gazing deep into

the dazzling air with its luminous mists, he smiled:

 

“How good it is to live!…”

 

To live!… A boat passed…. The thought suddenly of those who were no

longer alive, of a boat gone by on which they were together: he—she….

She?… Not that one, sleeping by his side.—She, the only she, the

beloved, the poor little woman who was dead.—But is it that one? How came

she there? How did they come to this room? He looks at her, he does not

know her: she is a stranger to him: yesterday morning she did not exist for

him. What does he know of her?—He knows that she is not clever. He knows

that she is not good. He knows that she is not even beautiful with her face

spiritless and bloated with sleep, her low forehead, her mouth open in

breathing, her swollen dried lips pouting like a fish. He knows that he

does not love her. And he is filled with a bitter sorrow when he thinks

that he kissed those strange lips, in the first moment with her, that he

has taken this beautiful body for which he cares nothing on the first night

of their meeting,—and that she whom he loved, he watched her live and die

by his side and never dared touch her hair with his lips, that he will

never know the perfume of her being. Nothing more. All is crumbled away.

The earth has taken all from him. And he never defended what was his….

 

And while he leaned over the innocent sleeper and scanned her face, and

looked at her with eyes of unkindness, she felt his eyes upon her. Uneasy

under his scrutiny she made a great effort to raise her heavy lids and to

smile: and she said, stammering a little like a waking child:

 

“Don’t look at me. I’m ugly….”

 

She fell back at once, weighed down with sleep, smiled once more, murmured.

 

“Oh! I’m so … so sleepy!…” and went off again into her dreams.

 

He could not help laughing: he kissed her childish lips more tenderly. He

watched the girl sleeping for a moment longer, and got up quietly. She gave

a comfortable sigh when he was gone. He tried not to wake her as he

dressed, though there was no danger of that: and when he had done he sat in

the chair near the window and watched the steaming smoking river which

looked as though it were covered with ice: and he fell into a brown study

in which there hovered music, pastoral, melancholy.

 

From time to time she half opened her eyes and looked at him vaguely, took

a second or two, smiled at him, and passed from one sleep to another. She

asked him the time.

 

“A quarter to nine.”

 

Half asleep she pondered:

 

“What! Can it be a quarter to nine?”

 

At half-past nine she stretched, sighed, and said that she was going to get

up.

 

It was ten o’clock before she stirred. She was petulant.

 

“Striking again!… The clock is fast!…” He laughed and went and sat on

the bed by her side. She put her arms round his neck and told him her

dreams. He did not listen very attentively and interrupted her with little

love words. But she made him be silent and went on very seriously, as

though she were telling something of the highest importance:

 

“She was at dinner: the Grand Duke was there: Myrrha was a Newfoundland

dog…. No, a frizzy sheep who waited at table…. Ada had discovered a

method of rising from the earth, of walking, dancing, and lying down in the

air. You see it was quite simple: you had only to do … thus … thus …

and it was done….”

 

Christophe laughed at her. She laughed too, though a little ruffled at his

laughing. She shrugged her shoulders.

 

“Ah! you don’t understand!…”

 

They breakfasted on the bed from the same cup, with the same spoon.

 

At last she got up: she threw off the bedclothes and slipped down from the

bed. Then she sat down to recover her breath and looked at her feet.

Finally she clapped her hands and told him to go out: and as he was in no

hurry about it she took him by the shoulders and thrust him out of the door

and then locked it.

 

After she had dawdled, looked over and stretched each of her handsome

limbs, she sang, as she washed, a sentimental Lied in fourteen couplets,

threw water at Christophe’s face—he was outside drumming on the

window—and as they left she plucked the last rose in the garden and then

they took the steamer. The mist was not yet gone: but the sun shone through

it: they floated through a creamy light. Ada sat at the stern with

Christophe: she was sleepy and a little sulky: she grumbled about the light

in her eyes, and said that she would have a headache all day. And as

Christophe did not take her complaints seriously enough she returned into

morose silence. Her eyes were hardly opened and in them was the funny

gravity of children who have just woke up. But at the next landing-stage an

elegant lady came and sat not far from her, and she grew lively at once:

she talked eagerly to Christophe about things sentimental and

distinguished. She had resumed with him the ceremonious Sie.

 

Christophe was thinking about what she could say to her employer by way of

excuse for her lateness. She was hardly at all concerned about it.

 

“Bah! It’s not the first time.”

 

“The first time that … what?”

 

“That I have been late,” she said, put out by the question.

 

He dared not ask her what had caused her lateness.

 

“What will you tell her?”

 

“That my mother is ill, dead … how do I know?”

 

He was hurt by her talking so lightly.

 

“I don’t want you to lie.”

 

She took offense:

 

“First of all, I never lie…. And then, I cannot very well tell her….”

 

He asked her half in jest, half in earnest:

 

“Why not?”

 

She laughed, shrugged, and said that he was coarse and ill-bred, and that

she had already asked him not to use the Du to her.

 

“Haven’t I the right?”

 

“Certainly not.”

 

“After what has happened?”

 

“Nothing has happened.”

 

She looked at him a little defiantly and laughed: and although she was

joking, he felt most strongly that it would not have cost her much to say

it seriously and almost to believe it. But some pleasant memory tickled

her: for she burst out laughing and looked at Christophe and kissed him

loudly without any concern for the people about, who did not seem to be in

the least surprised by it.

 

*

 

Now on all his excursions he was accompanied by shop-girls and clerks: he

did not like their vulgarity, and used to try to lose them: but Ada out of

contrariness was no longer disposed for wandering in the woods. When it

rained or for some other reason they did not leave the town he would take

her to the theater, or the museum, or the Thiergarten: for she insisted

on being seen with him. She even wanted him to go to church with her; but

he was so absurdly sincere that he would not set foot inside a church since

he had lost his belief—(on some other excuse he had resigned his position

as organist)—and at the same time, unknown to himself, remained much too

religious not to think Ada’s proposal sacrilegious.

 

He used to go to her rooms in the evening. Myrrha would be there, for she

lived in the same house.