Jean-Christophe In Paris — THE HOUSE, I, part 1
I
I have a friend!...
Oh!
The delight of having found a kindred soul to which to cling in the midst of torment, a tender and sure refuge in which to breathe again while the fluttering heart beats slower!
No longer to be alone, no longer never to unarm, no longer to stay on guard with straining, burning eyes, until from sheer fatigue he should fall into the hands of his enemies!
To have a dear companion into whose hands all his life should be delivered--the friend whose life was delivered into his!
At last to taste the sweetness of repose, to sleep while the friend watches, watch while the friend sleeps.
To know the joy of protecting a beloved creature who should trust in him like a little child.
To know the greater joy of absolute surrender to that friend, to feel that he is in possession of all secrets, and has power over life and death.
Aging, worn out, weary of the burden of life through so many years, to find new birth and fresh youth in the body of the friend, through his eyes to see the world renewed, through his senses to catch the fleeting loveliness of all things by the way, through his heart to enjoy the splendor of living....
Even to suffer in his suffering....
Ah!
Even suffering is joy if it be shared!
I have a friend!...
Away from me, near me, in me always.
I have my friend, and I am his.
My friend loves me.
I am my friend's, the friend of my friend.
Of our two souls love has fashioned one.
* * * * * Christophe's first thought, when he awoke the day after the Roussins' party, was for Olivier Jeannin.
At once he felt an irresistible longing to see him again.
He got up and went out.
It was not yet eight o'clock.
It was a heavy and rather oppressive morning.
An April day before its time: stormy clouds were hovering over Paris.
Olivier lived below the hill of Sainte-Geneviève, in a little street near the _Jardin des Plantes_.
The house stood in the narrowest part of the street.
The staircase led out of a dark yard, and was full of divers unpleasant smells.
The stairs wound steeply up and sloped down towards the wall, which was disfigured with scribblings in pencil.
On the third floor a woman, with gray hair hanging down, and in petticoat-bodice, gaping at the neck, opened the door when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and slammed it to when she saw Christophe.
There were several flats on each landing, and through the ill-fitting doors Christophe could hear children romping and squalling.
The place was a swarming heap of dull base creatures, living as it were on shelves, one above the other, in that low-storied house, built round a narrow, evil-smelling yard.
Christophe was disgusted, and wondered what lusts and covetous desires could have drawn so many creatures to this place, far from the fields, where at least there is air enough for all, and what it could profit them in the end to be in the city of Paris, where all their lives they were condemned to live in such a sepulcher.
He reached Olivier's landing.
A knotted piece of string was his bell-pull.
Christophe tugged at it so mightily that at the noise several doors on the staircase were half opened.
Olivier came to the door.
Christophe was struck by the careful simplicity of his dress: and the neatness of it, which at any other time would have been little to his liking, was in that place an agreeable surprise: in such an atmosphere of foulness there was something charming and healthy about it.
And at once he felt just as he had done the night before when he gazed into Olivier's clear, honest eyes.
He held out his hand: but Olivier was overcome with shyness, and murmured: "You....
You here!"
Christophe was engrossed in catching at the lovable quality of the man as it was revealed to him in that fleeting moment of embarrassment, and he only smiled in answer.
He moved forward and forced Olivier backward, and entered the one room in which he both slept and worked.
An iron bedstead stood against the wall near the window; Christophe noticed the pillows heaped up on the bolster.
There were three chairs, a black-painted table, a small piano, bookshelves and books, and that was all.
The room was cramped, low, ill-lighted: and yet there was in it a ray of the pure light that shone in the eyes of its owner.
Everything was clean and tidy, as though a woman's hands had dealt with it: and a few roses in a vase brought spring-time into the room, the walls of which were decorated with photographs of old Florentine pictures.
"So....
You....
You have come to see me?"
said Olivier warmly.
"Good Lord, I had to!"
said Christophe.
"You would never have come to me?"
"You think not?"
replied Olivier.
Then, quickly: "Yes, you are right.
But it would not be for want of thinking of it."
"What would have stopped you?"
"Wanting to too much."
"That's a fine reason!"
"Yes.
Don't laugh.
I was afraid you would not want it as much as I." "A lot that's worried me!
I wanted to see you, and here I am.
If it bores you, I shall know at once."
"You will have to have good eyes."
They smiled at each other.
Olivier went on: "I was an ass last night.
I was afraid I might have offended you.
My shyness is absolutely a disease: I can't get a word out."
"I shouldn't worry about that.
There are plenty of talkers in your country: one is only too glad to meet a man who is silent occasionally, even though it be only from shyness and in spite of himself."
Christophe laughed and chuckled over his own gibe.
"Then you have come to see me because I can be silent?"
"Yes.
For your silence, the sort of silence that is yours.
There are all sorts: and I like yours, and that's all there is to say."
"But how could you sympathize with me?
You hardly saw me."
"That's my affair.
It doesn't take me long to make up my mind.
When I see a face that I like in the crowd, I know what to do: I go after it; I simply have to know the owner of it."
"And don't you ever make mistakes when you go after them?"
"Often."
"Perhaps you have made a mistake this time."
"We shall see."
"Ah!
In that case I'm done!
You terrify me.
If I think you are watching me, I shall lose what little wits I have."
With fond and eager curiosity Christophe watched the sensitive, mobile face, which blushed and went pale by turns.
Emotion showed fleeting across it like the shadows of clouds on a lake.
"What a nervous youngster it is!"
he thought.
"He is like a woman."
He touched his knee.
"Come, come!"
he said.
"Do you think I should come to you with weapons concealed about me?
I have a horror of people who practise their psychology on their friends.
I only ask that we should both be open and sincere, and frankly and without shame, and without being afraid of committing ourselves finally to anything or of any sort of contradiction, be true to what we feel.
I ask only the right to love now, and next minute, if needs must, to be out of love.
There's loyalty and manliness in that, isn't there?"
Olivier gazed at him with serious eyes, and replied: "No doubt.
It is the more manly part, and you are strong enough.
But I don't think I am."
"I'm sure you are," said Christophe; "but in a different way.
And then, I've come just to help you to be strong, if you want to be so.
For what I have just said gives me leave to go on and say, with more frankness than I should otherwise have had, that--without prejudice for to-morrow--I love you."
Olivier blushed hotly.
He was struck dumb with embarrassment, and could not speak.
Christophe glanced round the room.
"It's a poor place you live in.
Haven't you another room?"
"Only a lumber-room."
"Ugh!
I can't breathe.
How do you manage to live here?"
"One does it somehow."
"I couldn't--never."
Christophe unbuttoned his waistcoat and took a long breath.
Olivier went and opened the window wide.
"You must be very unhappy in a town, M. Krafft.
But there's no danger of my suffering from too much vitality.
I breathe so little that I can live anywhere.
And yet there are nights in summer when even I am hard put to it to get through.
I'm terrified when I see them coming.
Then I stay sitting up in bed, and I'm almost stifled."
Christophe looked at the heap of pillows on the bed, and from them to Olivier's worn face: and he could see him struggling there in the darkness.
"Leave it," he said.
"Why do you stay?"
Olivier shrugged his shoulders and replied carelessly: "It doesn't matter where I live."
Heavy footsteps padded across the floor above them.
In the room below a shrill argument was toward.
And always, without ceasing, the walls were shaken by the rumbling of the buses in the street.
"And the house!"
Christophe went on.
"The house reeking of filth, the hot dirtiness of it all, the shameful poverty--how can you bring yourself to come back to it night after night?
Don't you lose heart with it all?
I
couldn't live in it for a moment.
I'd rather sleep under an arch."
"Yes.
I felt all that at first, and suffered.
I was just as disgusted as you are.
When I went for walks as a boy, the mere sight of some of the crowded dirty streets made me ill.
They gave me all sorts of fantastic horrors, which I dared not speak of.
I used to think: 'If there were an earthquake now, I should be dead, and stay here for ever and ever'; and that seemed to me the most appalling thing that could happen.
I never thought that one day I should live in one of them of my own free-will, and that in all probability I shall die there.
And then it became easier to put up with: it had to.
It still revolts me: but I try not to think of it.
When I climb the stairs I close my eyes, and stop my ears, and hold my nose, and shut off all my senses and withdraw utterly into myself.
And then, over the roof there, I can see the tops of the branches of an acacia.
I sit here in this corner so that I don't see anything else: and in the evening when the wind rustles through them I fancy that I am far away from Paris: and the mighty roar of a forest has never seemed so sweet to me as the gentle murmuring of those few frail leaves at certain moments."
"Yes," said Christophe.
"I've no doubt that you are always dreaming; but it's all wrong to waste your fancy in such a struggle against the sordid things of life, when you might be using it in the creation of other lives."
"Isn't it the common lot?
Don't you yourself waste energy in anger and bitter struggles?"
"That's not the same thing.
It's natural to me: what I was born for.
Look at my arms and hands!
Fighting is the breath of life to me.
But you haven't any too much strength: that's obvious."
Olivier looked sadly down at his thin wrists, and said: "Yes.
I am weak: I always have been.
But what can I do?
One must live?"
"How do you make your living?"
"I teach."
"Teach what?"
"Everything--Latin, Greek, history.
I coach for degrees.
And I lecture on Moral Philosophy at the Municipal School."
"Lecture on what?"
"Moral Philosophy."
"What in thunder is that?
Do they teach morality in French schools?"
Olivier smiled: "Of course."
"Is there enough in it to keep you talking for ten minutes?"
"I have to lecture for twelve hours a week."
"Do you teach them to do evil, then?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's no need for so much talk to find out what good is."
"Or to leave it undiscovered either."
"Good gracious, yes!
Leave it undiscovered.
There are worse ways of doing good than knowing nothing about it.
Good isn't a matter of knowledge: it's a matter of action.
It's only your neurasthenics who go haggling about morality: and the first of all moral laws is not to be neurasthenic.
Rotten pedants!
They are like cripples teaching people how to walk."
"But they don't do their talking for such as you.
You _know_: but there are so many who do not know!"
"Well, let them crawl like children until they learn how to walk by themselves.
But whether they go on two legs or on all fours, the first thing, the only thing you can ask is that they should walk somehow."
He was prowling round and round and up and down the room, though less than four strides took him across it.
He stopped in front of the piano, opened it, turned over the pages of some music, touched the keys, and said: "Play me something."
Olivier started.
"I!"
he said.
"What an idea!"
"Madame Roussin told me you were a good musician.
Come: play me something."
"With you listening?
Oh!"
he said, "I should die."
The sincerity and simplicity with which he spoke made Christophe laugh: Olivier, too, though rather bashfully.
"Well," said Christophe, "is that a reason for a Frenchman?"
Olivier still drew back.
"But why?
Why do you want me to?"
"I'll tell you presently.
Play!"
"What?"
"Anything you like."
Olivier sat down at the piano with a sigh, and, obedient to the imperious will of the friend who had sought him out, he began to play the beautiful _Adagio in B Minor_ of Mozart.
At first his fingers trembled so that he could hardly make them press down the keys: but he regained courage little by little: and, while he thought he was but repeating Mozart's utterance, he unwittingly revealed his inmost heart.
Music is an indiscreet confidant: it betrays the most secret thoughts of its lovers to those who love it.
Through the godlike scheme of the _Adagio_ of Mozart Christophe could perceive the invisible lines of the character, not of Mozart, but of his new friend sitting there by the piano: the serene melancholy, the timid, tender smile of the boy, so nervous, so pure, so full of love, so ready to blush.
But he had hardly reached the end of the air, the topmost point where the melody of sorrowful love ascends and snaps, when a sudden irrepressible feeling of shame and modesty overcame Olivier, so that he could not go on: his fingers would not move, and his voice failed him.
His hands fell by his side, and he said: "I can't play any more...."
Christophe was standing behind him, and he stooped and reached over him and finished the broken melody: then he said: "Now I know the music of your soul."
He held his hands, and stayed for a long time gazing into his face.
At last he said: "How queer it is!...
I have seen you before....
I know you so well, and I have known you so long!..."
Olivier's lips trembled: he was on the point of speaking.
But he said nothing.
Christophe went on gazing at him for a moment or two longer.
Then he smiled and said no more, and went away.
* * * * * He went down the stairs with his heart filled with joy.
He passed two ugly children going up, one with bread, the other with a bottle of oil.
He pinched their cheeks jovially.
He smiled at the scowling porter.
When he reached the street he walked along humming to himself until he came to the Luxembourg.
He lay down on a seat in the shade, and closed his eyes.
The air was still and heavy: there were only a few passers-by.
Very faintly he could hear the irregular trickling of the fountain, and every now and then the scrunching of the gravel as footsteps passed him by.
Christophe was overcome with drowsiness, and he lay basking like a lizard in the sun: his face had been out of the shadow of the trees for some time: but he could not bring himself to stir.
His thoughts wound about and about: he made no attempt to hold and fix them: they were all steeped in the light of happiness.
The Luxembourg clock struck: he did not listen to it: but, a moment later, he thought it must have been striking twelve.
He jumped up to realize that he had been lounging for a couple of hours, had missed an appointment with Hecht, and wasted the whole morning.
He laughed, and went home whistling.
He composed a _Rondo_ in canon on the cry of a peddler.
Even sad melodies now took on the charm of the gladness that was in him.
As he passed the laundry in his street, as usual, he glanced into the shop, and saw the little red-haired girl, with her dull complexion flushed with the heat, and she was ironing with her thin arms bare to the shoulder and her bodice open at the neck: and, as usual, she ogled him brazenly: for the first time he was not irritated by her eyes meeting his.
He laughed once more.
When he reached his room he was free of all the obsessions from which he had suffered.
He flung his hat, coat, and vest in different directions, and sat down to work with an all-conquering zest.
He gathered together all his scattered scraps of music, which were lying all over the room, but his mind was not in his work: he only read the script with his eyes: and a few minutes later he fell back into the happy somnolence that had been upon him in the Luxembourg Gardens; his head buzzed, and he could not think.
Twice or thrice he became aware of his condition, and tried to shake it off: but in vain.
He swore light-heartedly, got up, and dipped his head in a basin of cold water.
That sobered him a little.
He sat down at the table again, sat in silence, and smiled dreamily.
He was wondering: "What is the difference between that and love?"
Instinctively he had begun to think in whispers, as though he were ashamed.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"There are not two ways of loving....
Or, rather, yes, there are two ways: there is the way of those who love with every fiber of their being, and the way of those who only give to love a part of their superfluous energy.
God keep me from such cowardice of heart!"
He stopped in his thought, from a sort of shame and dread of following it any farther.
He sat for a long time smiling at his inward dreams.
His heart sang through the silence: _Du bist mein, und nun ist das Meine Meiner als jemals...
_ ("Thou art mine, and now I am mine, more mine than I have ever been...."
) He took a sheet of paper, and with tranquil ease wrote down the song that was in his heart.
* * * * * They decided to take rooms together.
Christophe wanted to take possession at once without worrying about the waste of half a quarter.
Olivier was more prudent, though not less ardent in their friendship, and thought it better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired.
Christophe could not understand such parsimony.
Like many people who have no money, he never worried about losing it.
He imagined that Olivier was even worse off than himself.
One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to him he left him suddenly and returned a few hours later in triumph with a few francs which he had squeezed in advance out of Hecht.
Olivier blushed and refused.
Christophe was put out and made to throw them to an Italian who was playing in the yard.
Olivier withheld him.
Christophe went away, apparently offended, but really furious with his own clumsiness to which he attributed Olivier's refusal.
A letter from his friend brought balm to his wounds.
Olivier could write what he could not express by word of mouth: he could tell of his happiness in knowing him and how touched he was by Christophe's offer of assistance.
Christophe replied with a crazy, wild letter, rather like those which he wrote when he was fifteen to his friend Otto: it was full of _Gemüth_ and blundering jokes: he made puns in French and German, and even translated them into music.
At last they went into their rooms.
In the Montparnasse quarter, near the _Place Denfert_, on the fifth floor of an old house they had found a flat of three rooms and a kitchen, all very small, and looking on to a tiny garden inclosed by four high walls.
From their windows they looked out over the opposite wall, which was lower than the rest, on to one of those large convent gardens which are still to be found in Paris, hidden and unknown.
Not a soul was to be seen in the deserted avenues.
The old trees, taller and more leafy than those in the Luxembourg Gardens, trembled in the sunlight: troops of birds sang: in the early dawn the blackbirds fluted, and then there came the riotously rhythmic chorus of the sparrows: and in summer in the evening the rapturous cries of the swifts cleaving the luminous air and skimming through the heavens.
And at night, under the moon, like bubbles of air mounting to the surface of a pond, there came up the pearly notes of the toads.
Almost they might have forgotten the surrounding presence of Paris but that the old house was perpetually shaken by the heavy vehicles rumbling by, as though the earth beneath were shivering in a fever.
One of the rooms was larger and finer than the rest, and there was a struggle between the friends as to who should not have it.
They had to toss for it: and Christophe, who had made the suggestion, contrived not to win with a dexterity of which he found it hard to believe himself capable.
