Jean-Christophe, vol 1 by Romain Rolland (fb2 epub reader .txt) đź“•
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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his brother’s force, and to be afraid that others would feel it, too),
Rodolphe was only too happy to crush Christophe beneath the weight of his
superiority. He had never worried much about his mother, though he knew her
straitened circumstances: although he was well able to afford to help her,
he left it all to Christophe. But when he heard of Christophe’s intention
he discovered at once hidden treasures of affection. He was furious at
his proposing to leave his mother and called it monstrous egoism. He was
impudent enough to tell Christophe so. He lectured him loftily like a child
who deserves smacking: he told him stiffly of his duty towards his mother
and of all that she had sacrificed for him. Christophe almost burst with
rage. He kicked Rodolphe out and called him a rascal and a hypocrite.
Rodolphe avenged himself by feeding his mother’s indignation. Excited by
him, Louisa began to persuade herself that Christophe was behaving like a
bad son. She tried to declare that he had mo right to go, and she was only
too willing to believe it. Instead of using only her tears, which were her
strongest weapon, she reproached Christophe bitterly and unjustly, and
disgusted him. They said cruel things to each other: the result was that
Christophe, who, till then, had been hesitating, only thought of hastening
his preparations for his departure. He knew that the charitable neighbors
were commiserating his mother and that in the opinion of the neighborhood
she was regarded as a victim and himself as a monster. He set his teeth and
would not go back on his resolve.
The days passed. Christophe and Louisa hardly spoke to each other. Instead
of enjoying to the last drop their last days together, these two who loved
each other wasted the time that was left—as too often happens—in one of
those sterile fits of sullenness in which so many affections are swallowed
up. They only met at meals, when they sat opposite each other, not looking
at each other, never speaking, forcing themselves to eat a few mouthfuls,
not so much for the sake of eating as for the sake of appearances.
Christophe would contrive to mumble a few words, but Louisa would not
reply; and when she tried to talk he would be silent. This state of things
was intolerable to both of them, and the longer it went on the more
difficult it became to break it. Were they going to part like that? Louisa
admitted that she had been unjust and awkward, but she was suffering too
much to know how to win back her son’s love, which she thought she had
lost, and at all costs to prevent his departure, the idea of which she
refused to face. Christophe stole glances at his mother’s pale, swollen
face and he was torn by remorse; but he had made up his mind to go, and
knowing that he was going forever out of her life, he wished cowardly to be
gone to escape his remorse.
His departure was fixed for the next day but one. One of their sad meals
had just come to an end. When they finished their supper, during which they
had not spoken a word, Christophe withdrew to his room; and sitting at his
desk, with his head in his hands—he was incapable of working—he became
lost in thought. The night was drawing late: it was nearly one o’clock in
the morning. Suddenly he heard a noise, a chair upset in the next room. The
door opened and his mother appeared in her nightgown, barefooted, and threw
her arms round his neck and sobbed. She was feverish. She kissed her son
and moaned through her despairing sobs:
“Don’t go! Don’t go! I implore you! I implore you! My dear, don’t go!… I
shall die…. I can’t, I can’t bear it!…”
He was alarmed and upset. He kissed her and said: “Dear mother, calm
yourself, please, please!”
But she went on:
“I can’t bear it … I have only you. If you go, what will become of me? I
shall die if you go. I don’t want to die away from you. I don’t want to die
alone. Wait until I am dead!…”
Her words rent his heart. He did not know what to say to console her. What
arguments could hold good against such an outpouring of love and sorrow!
He took her on his knees and tried to calm her with kisses and little
affectionate words. The old woman gradually became silent and wept softly.
When she was a little comforted, he said:
“Go to bed. You will catch cold.”
She repeated: “Don’t go!”
He said in a low voice: “I will not go.”
She trembled and took his hand. “Truly?” she said. “Truly?”
He turned his head away sadly. “To-morrow,” he answered, “I will tell you
to-morrow…. Leave me now, please!…”
She got up meekly and went back to her room. Next morning she was ashamed
of her despairing outburst which had come upon her like a madness in the
middle of the night, and she was fearful of what her son would say to her.
She waited for him, sitting in a corner of the room. She had taken up some
knitting for occupation, but her hands refused to hold it. She let it fall.
Christophe entered. They greeted each other in a whisper, without looking
at each other. He was gloomy, and went and stood by the window, with his
back to his mother, and he stayed without speaking. There was a great
struggle in him. He knew the result of it already, and was trying to delay
the issue. Louisa dared not speak a word to him and provoke the answer
which she expected and feared. She forced herself to take up her knitting
again, but she could not see what she was doing, and she dropped her
stitches. Outside it was raining. After a long silence Christophe came to
her. She did not stir, but her heart was beating. Christophe stood still
and looked at her, then, suddenly, he went down on his knees and hid his
face in his mother’s dress, and without saying a word, he wept. Then she
understood that he was going to stay, and her heart was filled with a
mortal agony of joy—but at once she was seized by remorse, for she felt
all that her son was sacrificing for her, and she began to suffer all that
Christophe had suffered when it was she whom he sacrificed. She bent over
him and covered his brow and his hair with kisses. In silence their tears
and their sorrow mingled. At last he raised his head, and Louisa took his
face in her hands and looked into his eyes. She would have liked to say to
him:
“Go!”
But she could not.
He would have liked to say to her:
“I am glad to stay.”
But he could not.
The situation was hopeless; neither of them could alter it. She sighed in
her sorrow and love:
“Ah! if we could all be born and all die together!” Her simple way filled
him with tenderness; he dried his tears and tried to smile and said:
“We shall all die together.”
She insisted:
“Truly you will not go?”
He got up:
“I have said so. Don’t let us talk about it. There is nothing more to be
said.”
Christophe kept his word; he never talked of going again, but he could not
help thinking of it. He stayed, but he made his mother pay dearly for his
sacrifice by his sadness and bad temper. And Louisa tactlessly—much more
tactlessly than she knew, never failing to do what she ought not to have
done—Louisa, who knew only too well the reason of his grief, insisted on
his telling her what it was. She worried him with her affection, uneasy,
vexing, argumentative, reminding him every moment that they were very
different from each other—and that he was trying to forget. How often
he had tried to open his heart to her! But just as he was about to speak
the Great Wall of China would rise between them, and he would keep his
secrets buried in himself. She would guess, but she never dared invite his
confidence, or else she could not. When she tried she would succeed only in
flinging back in him those secrets which weighed so sorely on him and which
he was so longing to tell.
A thousand little things, harmless tricks, cut her off from him and
irritated Christophe. The good old creature was doting. She had to talk
about the local gossip, and she had that nurse’s tenderness which will
recall all the silly little things of the earliest years, and everything
that is associated with the cradle. We have such difficulty in issuing
from it and growing into men and women! And Juliet’s nurse must forever
be laying before us our duty-swaddling clothes, commonplace thoughts,
the whole unhappy period in which the growing soul struggles against the
oppression of vile matter or stifling surroundings!
And with it all she had little outbursts of touching tenderness—as though
to a little child—which used to move him greatly and he would surrender to
them—like a little child.
The worst of all to bear was living from morning to night as they did,
together, always together, isolated from the rest of the world. When two
people suffer and cannot help each other’s suffering, exasperation is
fatal; each in the end holds the other responsible for the suffering; and
each in the end believes it. It were better to be alone; alone in
suffering.
It was a daily torment for both of them. They would never have broken free
if chance had not come to break the cruel indecision, against which they
were struggling, in a way that seemed unfortunate—but it was really
fortunate.
It was a Sunday in October. Four o’clock in the afternoon. The weather was
brilliant. Christophe had stayed in his room all day, chewing the cud of
melancholy.
He could bear it no longer; he wanted desperately to go out, to walk, to
expend his energy, to tire himself out, so as to stop thinking.
Relations with his mother had been strained since the day before. He was
just going out without saying good-bye to her; but on the stairs he thought
how it would hurt her the whole evening when she was left alone. He went
back, making an excuse of having left something in his room. The door of
his mother’s room was ajar. He put his head in through the aperture. He
watched his mother for a, few moments…. (What a place those two seconds
were to fill in his life ever after!)…
Louisa had just come in from vespers. She was sitting in her favorite
place, the recess of the window. The wall of the house opposite, dirty
white and cracked, obstructed the view, but from the corner where she sat
she could see to the right through the yards of the next houses a little
patch of lawn the size of a pocket-handkerchief. On the window-sill a
pot of convolvulus climbed along its threads and over this frail ladder
stretched its tendrils which were caressed by a ray of sunlight. Louisa was
sitting in a low chair bending over her great Bible which was open on her
lap, but she was not reading. Her hands were laid flat on the book—her
hands with their swollen veins, worker’s nails, square and a little
bent—and she was devouring with loving eyes the little plant and the patch
of sky she could see through it. A sunbeam, basking on the green
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