Jean-Christophe, vol 1 by Romain Rolland (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕
He waited for contradiction, and spat on the fire. Then, as neither mother nor child raised any objection, he was for going on, but relapsed into silence.
* * * * *
They said no more. Both Jean Michel, sitting by the fireside, and Louisa, in her bed, dreamed sadly. The old man, in spite of what he had said, had bitter thoughts about his son's marriage, and Louisa was thinking of it also, and blaming herself, although she had nothing wherewith to reproach herself.
She had been a servant when, to everybody's surprise, and her own especially, she married Melchior Krafft, Jean Michel's son. The Kraffts were without fortune, but were considerable people in the little Rhine town in which the old man had settled down more than fifty years before. Both father and son were musicians, and known to all the musicians of the country from Cologne to Mannheim. Melchior played the violin at the Hof-Theater, and Jean Michel had formerly been director of the grand-ducal concerts. The o
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Jean-Christophe would sit in the great armchair by the window, with a book
on his knees, bending over the pictures and losing himself in them. The day
would die down, his eyes would grow weary, and then he would look no more,
and fall into vague dreaming. The wheels of a cart would rumble by along
the road, a cow would moo in the fields; the bells of the town, weary and
sleepy, would ring the evening Angelus. Vague desires, happy presentiments,
would awake in the heart of the dreaming child.
Suddenly Jean-Christophe would awake, filled with dull uneasiness. He would
raise his eyes—night! He would listen—silence! His grandfather had just
gone out. He shuddered. He leaned out of the window to try to see him. The
road was deserted; things began to take on a threatening aspect. Oh God!
If that should be coming! What? He could not tell. The fearful thing.
The doors were not properly shut. The wooden stairs creaked as under a
footstep. The boy leaped up, dragged the armchair, the two chairs and the
table, to the most remote corner of the room; he made a barrier of them;
the armchair against the wall, a chair to the right, a chair to the left,
and the table in front of him. In the middle he planted a pair of steps,
and, perched on top with his book and other books, like provisions against
a siege, he breathed again, having decided in his childish imagination that
the enemy could not pass the barrier—that was not to be allowed.
But the enemy would creep forth, even from his book. Among the old books
which the old man had picked up were some with pictures which made a
profound impression on the child: they attracted and yet terrified him.
There were fantastic visions—temptations of St. Anthony—in which
skeletons of birds hung in bottles, and thousands of eggs writhe like worms
in disemboweled frogs, and heads walk on feet, and asses play trumpets, and
household utensils and corpses of animals walk gravely, wrapped in great
cloths, bowing like old ladies. Jean-Christophe was horrified by them, but
always returned to them, drawn on by disgust. He would look at them for a
long time, and every now and then look furtively about him to see what was
stirring in the folds of the curtains. A picture of a flayed man in an
anatomy book was still more horrible to him. He trembled as he turned the
page when he came to the place where it was in the book. This shapeless
medley was grimly etched for him. The creative power inherent in every
child’s mind filled out the meagerness of the setting of them. He saw no
difference between the daubs and the reality. At night they had an even
more powerful influence over his dreams than the living things that he saw
during the day.
He was afraid to sleep. For several years nightmares poisoned his rest. He
wandered in cellars, and through the manhole saw the grinning flayed man
entering. He was alone in a room, and he heard a stealthy footstep in the
corridor; he hurled himself against the door to close it, and was just in
time to hold the handle; but it was turned from the outside; he could not
turn the key, his strength left him, and he cried for help. He was with his
family, and suddenly their faces changed; they did crazy things. He was
reading quietly, and he felt that an invisible being was all round him.
He tried to fly, but felt himself bound. He tried to cry out, but he was
gagged. A loathsome grip was about his neck. He awoke, suffocating, and
with his teeth chattering; and he went on trembling long after he was
awake; he could not be rid of his agony.
The roam in which he slept was a hole without door or windows; an old
curtain hung up by a curtain-rod over the entrance was all that separated
it from the room of his father and mother. The thick air stifled him. His
brother, who slept in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and
he was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little troubles
of the day reappeared infinitely magnified. In this state of nervous
tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The
creaking of a plank terrified him. His father’s breathing took on fantastic
proportions. It seemed to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous
sound was horrible to him; it seemed to him that there must be a beast
sleeping there. The night crushed him; it would never end; it must always
be so; he was lying there for months and months. He gasped for breath; he
half raised himself on his bed, sat up, dried his sweating face with his
shirt-sleeve. Sometimes he nudged his brother Rodolphe to wake him up; but
Rodolphe moaned, drew away from him the rest of the bedclothes, and went on
sleeping.
So he stayed in feverish agony until a pale beam of light appeared on
the floor below the curtain. This timorous paleness of the distant dawn
suddenly brought him peace. He felt the light gliding into the room, when
it was still impossible to distinguish it from darkness. Then his fever
would die down, his blood would grow calm, like a flooded river returning
to its bed; an even warmth would flow through all his body, and his eyes,
burning from sleeplessness, would close in spite of himself.
In the evening it was terrible to him to see the approach of the hour of
sleep. He vowed that he would not give way to it, to watch the whole night
through, fearing his nightmares, But in the end weariness always overcame
him, and it was always when he was least on his guard that the monsters
returned.
Fearful night! So sweet to most children, so terrible to some!… He was
afraid to sleep. He was afraid of not sleeping. Waking or sleeping, he
was surrounded by monstrous shapes, the phantoms of his own brain, the
larvæ floating in the half-day and twilight of childhood, as in the dark
chiaroscuro of sickness.
But these fancied terrors were soon to be blotted out in the great
Fear—that which is in the hearts of all men; that Fear which Wisdom does
in vain preen itself on forgetting or denying—Death.
*
One day when he was rummaging in a cupboard, he came upon several things
that he did not know—a child’s frock and a striped bonnet. He took them in
triumph to his mother, who, instead of smiling at him, looked vexed, and
bade him, take them back to the place where he had found them. When he
hesitated to obey, and asked her why, she snatched them from him without
reply, and put them on a shelf where he could not reach them. Roused to
curiosity, he plied her with questions. At last she told him that there had
been a little brother who had died before Jean-Christophe came into the
world. He was taken aback—he had never heard tell of him. He was silent
for a moment, and then tried to find out more. His mother seemed to be lost
in thought; but she told him that the little brother was called
Jean-Christophe like himself, but was more sensible. He put more questions
to her, but she would not reply readily. She told him only that his brother
was in Heaven, and was praying for them all. Jean-Christophe could get no
more out of her; she bade him be quiet, and to let her go on with her work.
She seemed to be absorbed in her sewing; she looked anxious, and did not
raise her eyes. But after some time she looked at him where he was in the
corner, whither he had retired to sulk, began to smile, and told him to go
and play outside.
These scraps of conversation profoundly agitated Jean-Christophe. There had
been a child, a little boy, belonging to his mother, like himself, bearing
the same name, almost exactly the same, and he was dead! Dead! He did not
exactly know what that was, but it was something terrible. And they never
talked of this other Jean-Christophe; he was quite forgotten. It would be
the same with him if he were to die? This thought was with him still in the
evening at table with his family, when he saw them all laughing and talking
of trifles. So, then, it was possible that they would be gay after he was
dead! Oh! he never would have believed that his mother could be selfish
enough to laugh after the death of her little boy! He hated them all. He
wanted to weep for himself, for his own death, in advance. At the same time
he wanted to ask a whole heap of questions, but he dared not; he remembered
the voice in which his mother had bid him be quiet. At last he could
contain himself no longer, and one night when he had gone to bed, and
Louisa came to kiss him, he asked:
“Mother, did he sleep in my bed?”
The poor woman trembled, and, trying to take on an indifferent tone of
voice, she asked:
“Who?”
“The little boy who is dead,” said Jean-Christophe in a whisper.
His mother clutched him with her hands.
“Be quiet—quiet,” she said.
Her voice trembled. Jean-Christophe, whose head was leaning against her
bosom, heard her heart beating. There was a moment of silence, then she
said:
“You must never talk of that, my dear…. Go to sleep…. No, it was not
his bed.”
She kissed him. He thought he felt her cheek wet against his. He wished he
could have been sure of it. He was a little comforted. There was grief in
her then! Then he doubted it again the next moment, when he heard her in
the next room talking in a quiet, ordinary voice. Which was true—that or
what had just been? He turned about for long in his bed without finding any
answer. He wanted his mother to suffer; not that he also did not suffer in
the knowledge that she was sad, but it would have done him so much good, in
spite of everything! He would have felt himself less alone. He slept, and
next day thought no more of it.
Some weeks afterwards one of the urchins with whom he played in the street
did not come at the usual time. One of them said that he was ill, and they
got used to not seeing him in their games. It was explained, it was quite
simple. One evening Jean-Christophe had gone to bed; it was early, and from
the recess in which his bed was, he saw the light in the room. There was a
knock at the door. A neighbor had come to have a chat. He listened
absently, telling himself stories as usual. The words of their talk did not
reach him. Suddenly he heard the neighbor say: “He is dead.” His blood
stopped, for he had understood who was dead. He listened and held his
breath. His parents cried out. Melchior’s booming voice said:
“Jean-Christophe, do you hear? Poor Fritz is dead.”
Jean-Christophe made an effort, and replied quietly:
“Yes, papa.”
His bosom was drawn tight as in a vise.
Melchior went on:
“‘Yes, papa.’ Is that all you say? You are not grieved by it.”
Louisa, who understood the child, said:
“‘Ssh! Let him sleep!”
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