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

home that evening if chance had not

brought him in contact with Mannheim just as he was sadly going home.

 

Mannheim took his arm and told him angrily, though he never ceased his

banter, that an old beast of a relation, his father’s sister, had just come

down upon them with all her retinue and that they had all to stay at home

to welcome her. He had time to get out of it: but his father would brook no

trifling with questions of family etiquette and the respect due to elderly

relatives: and as he had to handle his father carefully because he wanted

presently to get money out of him, he had had to give in and not go to the

play.

 

“You had tickets?” asked Christophe.

 

“An excellent box: and I have to go and give it—(I am just going now)—to

that old pig, Grünebaum, papa’s partner, so that he can swagger there with

the she Grünebaum and their turkey hen of a daughter. Jolly!… I want to

find something very disagreeable to say to them. They won’t mind so long as

I give them the tickets—although they would much rather they were

banknotes.”

 

He stopped short with his month open and looked at Christophe:

 

“Oh! but—but just the man I want!” He chuckled:

 

“Christophe, are you going to the theater?”

 

“No.”

 

“Good. You shall go. I ask it as a favor. Yon cannot refuse.”

 

Christophe did not understand.

 

“But I have no seat.”

 

“Here you are!” said Mannheim triumphantly, thrusting the ticket into his

hand.

 

“You are mad,” said Christophe. “What about your father’s orders?”

 

Mannheim laughed:

 

“He will be furious!” he said.

 

He dried his eyes and went on:

 

“I shall tap him to-morrow morning as soon as he is up before he knows

anything.”

 

“I cannot accept,” said Christophe, “knowing that he would not like it.”

 

“It does not concern you: you know nothing about it.”

 

Christophe had unfolded the ticket:

 

“And what would I do with a box for four?”

 

“Whatever you like. You can sleep in it, dance if you like. Take some

women. You must know some? If need be we can lend you some.”

 

Christophe held out the ticket to Mannheim:

 

“Certainly not. Take it back.”

 

“Not I,” said Mannheim, stepping back a pace. “I can’t force you to go if

it bores you, but I shan’t take it back. You can throw it in the fire or

even take it virtuously to the Grünebaums. I don’t care. Goodnight!”

 

He left Christophe in the middle of the street, ticket in hand, and went

away.

 

Christophe was unhappy about it. He said to himself that he ought to take

it to the Grünebaums: but he was not keen about the idea. He went home

still pondering, and when later he looked at the clock he saw that he had

only just time enough to dress for the theater. It would be too silly to

waste the ticket. He asked his mother to go with him. But Louisa declared

that she would rather go to bed. He went. At heart he was filled with

childish glee at the thought of his evening. Only one thing worried him:

the thought of having to be alone in such a pleasure. He had no remorse

about Mannheim’s father or the Grünebaums, whose box he was taking: but he

was remorseful about those whom he might have taken with him. He thought of

the joy it could give to other young people like himself: and it hurt him

not to be able to give it them. He cast about but could find nobody to whom

he could offer his ticket. Besides, it was late and he must hurry.

 

As he entered the theater he passed by the closed window on which a poster

announced that there was not a single seat left in the office. Among the

people who were turning away from it disappointedly he noticed a girl who

could not make up her mind to leave and was enviously watching the people

going in. She was dressed very simply in black; she was not very tall; her

face was thin and she looked delicate; and at the moment he did not notice

whether she were pretty or plain. He passed her: then he stopped, turned,

and without stopping to think:

 

“You can’t get a seat, Fräulein?” he asked point-blank.

 

She blushed and said with a foreign accent:

 

“No, sir.”

 

“I have a box which I don’t know what to do with. Will you make use of it

with me?”

 

She blushed again and thanked him and said she could not accept. Christophe

was embarrassed by her refusal, begged her pardon and tried to insist, but

he could not persuade her, although it was obvious that she was dying to

accept. He was very perplexed. He made up his mind suddenly.

 

“There is a way out of the difficulty,” he said. “You take the ticket. I

don’t want it. I have seen the play.” (He was boasting). “It will give you

more pleasure than me. Take it, please.”

 

The girl was so touched by his proposal and the cordial manner in which it

was made that tears all but came to her eyes. She murmured gratefully that

she could not think of depriving him of it.

 

“Then, come,” he said, smiling.

 

He looked so kind and honest that she was ashamed of having refused, and

she said in some confusion:

 

“Thank you. I will come.”

 

*

 

They went in. The Mannheims’ box was wide, big, and faced the stage: it was

impossible not to be seen in it if they had wished. It is useless to say

that their entry passed unnoticed. Christophe made the girl sit at the

front, while he stayed a little behind so as not to embarrass her. She sat

stiffly upright, not daring to turn her head: she was horribly shy: she

would have given much not to have accepted. To give her time to recover her

composure and not knowing what to talk to her about, Christophe pretended

to look the other way. Whichever way he looked it was easily seen that his

presence with an unknown companion among the brilliant people of the boxes

was exciting much curiosity and comment. He darted furious glances at

those who were looking at him: he was angry that people should go on being

interested in him when he took no interest in them. It did not occur to him

that their indiscreet curiosity was more busied with his companion than

with himself and that there was more offense in it. By way of showing his

utter indifference to anything they might say or think he leaned towards

the girl and began to talk to her. She looked so scared by his talking and

so unhappy at having to reply, and it seemed to be so difficult for her to

wrench out a “Yes” or a “No” without ever daring to look at him, that he

took pity on her shyness, and drew back to a corner. Fortunately the play

began.

 

Christophe had not seen the play bill and he hardly cared to know what part

the great actress was playing: he was one of those simple people who go

to the theater to see the play and not the actors. He had never wondered

whether the famous player would be Ophelia or the Queen; if he had wondered

about it he would have inclined towards the Queen, bearing in naiad the

ages of the two ladies. But it could never have occurred to him that she

would play Hamlet. When he saw Hamlet, and heard his mechanical dolly

squeak, it was some time before he could believe it; he wondered if he were

not dreaming.

 

“But who? Who is it?” he asked half aloud. “It can’t be….”

 

And when he had to accept that it was Hamlet, he rapped out an oath,

which fortunately his companion did not hear, because she was a foreigner,

though it was heard perfectly in the next box: for he was at once

indignantly bidden to be silent. He withdrew to the back of the box to

swear his fill. He could not recover his temper. If he had been just he

would have given homage to the elegance of the travesty and the _tour de

force_ of nature and art, which made it possible for a woman of sixty to

appear in a youth’s costume and even to seem beautiful in it—at least to

kindly eyes. But he hated all tours de force, everything which violates

and falsifies Nature, He liked a woman to be a woman, and a man a man. (It

does not often happen nowadays.) The childish and absurd travesty of the

Leonora of Beethoven did not please him much. But this travesty of Hamlet

was beyond all dreams of the preposterous. To make of the robust Dane,

fat and pale, choleric, cunning, intellectual, subject to hallucinations,

a woman,—not even a woman: for a woman playing the man can only be

a monster,—to make of Hamlet a eunuch or an androgynous betwixt and

between,—the times must be flabby indeed, criticism must be idiotic, to

let such disgusting folly be tolerated for a single day and not hissed

off the boards! The actress’s voice infuriated Christophe. She had that

singing, labored diction, that monotonous melopoeia which seems to have

been dear to the least poetic people in the world since the days of the

Champmeslé and the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Christophe was so exasperated by

it that he wanted to go away. He turned his back on the scene, and he made

hideous faces against the wall of the box like a child put in the corner.

Fortunately his companion dared not look at him: for if she had seen him

she would have thought him mad.

 

Suddenly Christophe stopped making faces. He stopped still and made no

sound. A lovely musical voice, a young woman’s voice, grave and sweet, was

heard. Christophe pricked his ears. As she went on with her words he turned

again, keenly interested to see what bird could warble so. He saw Ophelia.

In truth she was nothing like the Ophelia of Shakespeare. She was a

beautiful girl, tall, big and fine like a young fresh statue—Electra or

Cassandra. She was brimming with life. In spite of her efforts to keep

within her part, the force of youth and joy that was in her shone forth

from her body, her movements, her gestures, her brown eyes that laughed in

spite of herself. Such is the power of physical beauty that Christophe who

a moment before had been merciless in judging the interpretation of Hamlet

never for a moment thought of regretting that Ophelia was hardly at all

like his image of her: and he sacrificed his image to the present vision of

her remorselessly. With the unconscious faithlessness of people of passion

he even found a profound truth in the youthful ardor brimming in the depths

of the chaste and unhappy virgin heart. But the magic of the voice, pure,

warm, and velvety, worked the spell: every word sounded like a lovely

chord: about every syllable there hovered like the scent of thyme or wild

mint the laughing accent of the Midi with its full rhythm. Strange was this

vision of an Ophelia from Arles! In it was something of that golden sun and

its wild northwest wind, its mistral.

 

Christophe forgot his companion and came and sat by her side at the front

of the box: he never took his eyes off