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

Myrrha was not at all resentful against him: she

would hold out her soft hand, caressingly, and talk of trivial and improper

things and then dip away discreetly. The two women had never seemed to be

such friends as since they had had small reason for being so: they were

always together. Ada had no secrets from Myrrha: she told her everything:

Myrrha listened to everything: they seemed to be equally pleased with it

all.

 

Christophe was ill at ease in the company of the two women. Their

friendship, their strange conversations, their freedom of manner, the crude

way in which Myrrha especially viewed and spoke of things—(not so much in

his presence, however, as when he was not there, but Ada used to repeat her

sayings to him)—their indiscreet and impertinent curiosity, which was

forever turned upon subjects that were silly or basely sensual, the whole

equivocal and rather animal atmosphere oppressed him terribly, though it

interested him: for he knew nothing like it. He was at sea in the

conversations of the two little beasts, who talked of dress, and made silly

jokes, and laughed in an inept way with their eyes shining with delight

when they were off on the track of some spicy story. He was more at ease

when Myrrha left them. When the two women were together it was like being

in a foreign country without knowing the language. It was impossible to

make himself understood: they did not even listen: they poked fun at the

foreigner.

 

When he was alone with Ada they went on speaking different languages: but

at least they did make some attempt to understand each other. To tell the

truth, the more he understood her, the less he understood her. She was the

first woman he had known. For if poor Sabine was a woman he had known, he

had known nothing of her: she had always remained for him a phantom of his

heart. Ada took upon herself to make him make up for lost time. In his turn

he tried to solve the riddle of woman; an enigma which perhaps is no enigma

except for those who seek some meaning in it.

 

Ada was without intelligence: that was the least of her faults. Christophe

would have commended her for it, if she had approved it herself. But

although she was occupied only with stupidities, she claimed to have some

knowledge of the things of the spirit: and she judged everything with

complete assurance. She would talk about music, and explain to Christophe

things which he knew perfectly, and would pronounce absolute judgment and

sentence. It was useless to try to convince her she had pretensions and

susceptibilities in everything; she gave herself airs, she was obstinate,

vain: she would not—she could not understand anything. Why would she not

accept that she could understand nothing? He loved her so much better when

she was content with being just what she was, simply, with her own

qualities and failings, instead of trying to impose on others and herself!

 

In fact, she was little concerned with thought. She was concerned with

eating, drinking, singing, dancing, crying, laughing, sleeping: she wanted

to be happy: and that would have been all right if she had succeeded. But

although she had every gift for it: she was greedy, lazy, sensual, and

frankly egoistic in a way that revolted and amused Christophe: although she

had almost all the vices which make life pleasant for their fortunate

possessor, if not for their friends—(and even then does not a happy face,

at least if it be pretty, shed happiness on all those who come near

it?)—in spite of so many reasons for being satisfied with life and herself

Ada was not even clever enough for that. The pretty, robust girl, fresh,

hearty, healthy-looking, endowed with abundant spirits and fierce

appetites, was anxious about her health. She bemoaned her weakness, while

she ate enough for four. She was always sorry for herself: she could not

drag herself along, she could not breathe, she had a headache, feet-ache,

her eyes ached, her stomach ached, her soul ached. She was afraid of

everything, and madly superstitious, and saw omens everywhere: at meals the

crossing of knives and forks, the number of the guests, the upsetting of a

salt-cellar: then there must be a whole ritual to turn aside misfortune.

Out walking she would count the crows, and never failed to watch which side

they flew to: she would anxiously watch the road at her feet, and when a

spider crossed her path in the morning she would cry out aloud: then she

would wish to go home and there would be no other means of not interrupting

the walk than to persuade her that it was after twelve, and so the omen was

one of hope rather than of evil. She was afraid of her dreams: she would

recount them at length to Christophe; for hours she would try to recollect

some detail that she had forgotten; she never spared him one; absurdities

piled one on the other, strange marriages, deaths, dressmakers’ prices,

burlesque, and sometimes, obscene things. He had to listen to her and give

her his advice. Often she would be for a whole day under the obsession of

her inept fancies. She would find life ill-ordered, she would see things

and people rawly and overwhelm Christophe with her jeremiads; and it seemed

hardly worth while to have broken away from the gloomy middle-class people

with whom he lived to find once more the eternal enemy: the _”trauriger

ungriechischer Hypochondrist_.”

 

But suddenly in the midst of her sulks and grumblings, she would become

gay, noisy, exaggerated: there was no more dealing with her gaiety than

with her moroseness: she would burst out laughing for no reason and seem as

though she were never going to stop: she would rush across the fields, play

mad tricks and childish pranks, take a delight in doing silly things, in

mixing with the earth, and dirty things, and the beasts, and the spiders,

and worms, in teasing them, and hurting them, and making them eat each

other: the cats eat the birds, the fowls the worms, the ants the spiders,

not from any wickedness, or perhaps from an altogether unconscious instinct

for evil, from curiosity, or from having nothing better to do. She seemed

to be driven always to say stupid things, to repeat senseless words again

and again, to irritate Christophe, to exasperate him, set his nerves on

edge, and make him almost beside himself. And her coquetry as soon as

anybody—no matter who—appeared on the road!… Then she would talk

excitedly, laugh noisily, make faces, draw attention to herself: she would

assume an affected mincing gait. Christophe would have a horrible

presentiment that she was going to plunge into serious discussion.—And,

indeed, she would do so. She would become sentimental, uncontrolledly, just

as she did everything: she would unbosom herself in a loud voice.

Christophe would suffer and long to beat her. Least of all could he forgive

her her lack of sincerity. He did not yet know that sincerity is a gift as

rare as intelligence or beauty and that it cannot justly be expected of

everybody. He could not bear a lie: and Ada gave him lies in full measure.

She was always lying, quite calmly, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

She had that astounding faculty for forgetting what is displeasing to

them—or even what has been pleasing to them—which those women possess who

live from moment to moment.

 

And, in spite of everything, they loved each other with all their hearts.

Ada was as sincere as Christophe in her love. Their love was none the less

true for not being based on intellectual sympathy: it had nothing in common

with base passion. It was the beautiful love of youth: it was sensual, but

not vulgar, because it was altogether youthful: it was naïve, almost

chaste, purged by the ingenuous ardor of pleasure. Although Ada was not, by

a long way, so ignorant as Christophe, yet she had still the divine

privilege of youth of soul and body, that freshness of the senses, limpid

and vivid as a running stream, which almost gives the illusion of purity

and through life is never replaced. Egoistic, commonplace, insincere in her

ordinary life,—love made her simple, true, almost good: she understood in

love the joy that is to be found in self-forgetfulness. Christophe saw this

with delight: and he would gladly have died for her. Who can tell all the

absurd and touching illusions that a loving heart brings to its love! And

the natural illusion of the lover was magnified an hundredfold in

Christophe by the power of illusion which is born in the artist. Ada’s

smile held profound meanings for him: an affectionate word was the proof of

the goodness of her heart. He loved in her all that is good and beautiful

in the universe. He called her his own, his soul, his life. They wept

together over their love.

 

Pleasure was not the only bond between them: there was an indefinable

poetry of memories and dreams,—their own? or those of the men and women

who had loved before them, who had been before them,—in them?… Without a

word, perhaps without knowing it, they preserved the fascination of the

first moments of their meeting in the woods, the first days, the first

nights together: those hours of sleep in each other’s arms, still,

unthinking, sinking down into a flood of love and silent joy. Swift

fancies, visions, dumb thoughts, titillating, and making them go pale, and

their hearts sink under their desire, bringing all about them a buzzing as

of bees. A fine light, and tender…. Their hearts sink and beat no more,

borne down in excess of sweetness. Silence, languor, and fever, the

mysterious weary smile of the earth quivering under the first sunlight of

spring…. So fresh a love in two young creatures is like an April morning.

Like April it must pass. Youth of the heart is like an early feast of

sunshine.

 

*

 

Nothing could have brought Christophe closer to Ada in his love than the

way in which he was judged by others.

 

The day after their first meeting it was known all over the town. Ada made

no attempt to cover up the adventure, and rather plumed herself on her

conquest. Christophe would have liked more discretion: but he felt that the

curiosity of the people was upon him: and as he did not wish to seem to fly

from it, he threw in his lot with Ada. The little town buzzed with tattle.

Christophe’s colleagues in the orchestra paid him sly compliments to which

he did not reply, because he would not allow any meddling with his affairs.

The respectable people of the town judged his conduct very severely. He

lost his music lessons with certain families. With others, the mothers

thought that they must now be present at the daughters’ lessons, watching

with suspicious eyes, as though Christophe were intending to carry off the

precious darlings. The young ladies were supposed to know nothing.

Naturally they knew everything: and while they were cold towards Christophe

for his lack of taste, they were longing to have further details. It was

only among the small tradespeople, and the shop people, that Christophe was

popular: but not for long: he was just as annoyed by their approval as by

the condemnation of the rest: and being unable to do anything against that

condemnation, he took steps not to keep their approval: there was no

difficulty about that. He was furious with the general indiscretion.

 

The most indignant of all with him were Justus Euler and the Vogels. They

took Christophe’s misconduct as a personal outrage. They had not made any

serious plans concerning