Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 30

Christophe got up. The man motioned to him to follow. They went behind the barn and walked along a winding path through an orchard. They came to a cross, and then the farmer pointed along a road and said to Christophe:

"The frontier is over there."

Christophe walked on mechanically. He did not know why he should go on.

He was so tired, so broken in body and soul, that he longed to stop with every stride. But he felt that if he were to stop he would never be able to go on again, never budge from the spot where he fell. He walked on right through the day. He had not a penny to buy bread. Besides, he avoided the villages. He had a queer feeling which entirely baffled his reason, that, though he wished to die, he was afraid of being taken prisoner: his body was like a hunted animal fleeing before its captors.

His physical wretchedness, exhaustion, hunger, an obscure feeling of terror which was augmented by his worn-out condition, for the time being smothered his moral distress. His one thought was to find a refuge where he could in safety be alone with his distress and feed on it.

He crossed the frontier. In the distance he saw a town surmounted with towers and steeples and factory chimneys, from which the thick smoke streamed like black rivers, monotonously, all in the same direction across the gray sky under the rain. He was very near a collapse. Just then he remembered that he knew a German doctor, one Erich Braun, who lived in the town, and had written to him the year before, after one of his successes, to remind him of their old acquaintance. Dull though Braun might be, little though he might enter into his life, yet, like a wounded animal, Christophe made a supreme effort before he gave in to reach the house of some one who was not altogether a stranger.

Under the cloud of smoke and rain, he entered the gray and red city. He walked through it, seeing nothing, asking his way, losing himself, going back, wandering aimlessly. He was at the end of his tether. For the last time he screwed up his will that was so near to breaking-point to climb up the steep alleys, and the stairs which went to the top of a stiff little hill, closely overbuilt with houses round a gloomy church. There were sixty red stone steps in threes and sixes. Between each little flight of steps was a narrow platform for the door of a house. On each platform Christophe stopped swaying to take breath. Far over his head, above the church tower, crows were whirling.

At last he came upon the name he was looking for. He knocked.--The alley was in darkness. In utter weariness he closed his eyes. All was dark within him.... Ages pa.s.sed.

The narrow door was opened. A woman appeared on the threshold. Her face was in darkness: but her outline was sharply shown against the background of a little garden which could be clearly seen at the end of a long pa.s.sage, in the light of the setting sun. She was tall, and stood very erect, without a word, waiting for him to speak. He could not see her eyes: but he felt them taking him in. He asked for Doctor Erich Braun and gave his name. He had great difficulty in getting the words out. He was worn out with fatigue, hunger, and thirst. Without a word the woman went away, and Christophe followed her into a room with closed shutters. In the darkness he b.u.mped into her: his knees and body brushed against her. She went out again and closed the door of the room and left him in the dark. He stayed quite still, for fear of knocking something over, leaning against the wall with his forehead against the soft hangings: his ears buzzed: the darkness seemed alive and throbbing to his eyes.

Overhead he heard a chair being moved, an exclamation of surprise, a door slammed. Then came heavy footsteps down the stairs.

"Where is he?" asked a voice that he knew.

The door of the room was opened once more.

"What! You left him in the dark! Anna! Good gracious! A light!"

Christophe was so weak, he was so utterly wretched, that the sound of the man's loud voice, cordial as it was, brought him comfort in his misery. He gripped the hand that was held out to him. The two men looked at each other. Braun was a little man: he had a red face with a black, scrubby and untidy beard, kind eyes twinkling behind spectacles, a broad, b.u.mpy, wrinkled, worried, inexpressive brow, hair carefully plastered down and parted right down to his neck. He was very ugly: but Christophe was very glad to see him and to be shaking hands with him.

Braun made no effort to conceal his surprise.

"Good Heavens! How changed he is! What a state he is in!"

"I'm just come from Paris," said Christophe, "I'm a fugitive."

"I know, I know. We saw the papers. They said you were caught. Thank G.o.d! You've been much in our thoughts, mine and Anna's."

He stopped and made Christophe known to the silent creature who had admitted him:

"My wife."

She had stayed in the doorway of the room with a lamp in her hand. She had a taciturn face with a firm chin. The light fell on her brown hair with its reddish shades of color, and on her pallid cheeks. She held out her hand to Christophe stiffly with the elbow close against her side: he took it without looking at her. He was almost done.

"I came...." he tried to explain. "I thought you would be so kind ... if it isn't putting you out too much ... as to put me up for a day--"

Braun did not let him finish.

"A day!... Twenty days, fifty, as long as you like. As long as you are in this country you shall stay in our house: and I hope you will stay for a long time. It is an honor and a great happiness for us."

Christophe was overwhelmed by his kind words. He flung himself into Braun's arms.

"My dear Christophe, my dear Christophe!" said Braun.... "He is weeping.... Well, well what is it?... Anna! Anna!... Quick, he has fainted...."

Christophe had collapsed in his host's arms. He had succ.u.mbed to the fainting fit which had been imminent for several hours.

When he opened his eyes again he was lying in a great bed. A smell of wet earth came up through the open window. Braun was bending over him.

"Forgive me," murmured Christophe, trying to get up.

"He is dying of hunger!" cried Braun.

The woman went out and returned with a cup and gave him to drink. Braun held his head. Christophe was restored to life: but his exhaustion was stronger than his hunger: hardly was his head laid back on the pillow than he went to sleep. Braun and his wife watched over him: then, seeing that he only needed rest, they left him.

He fell into the sort of sleep that seems to last for years, a heavy crushing sleep, dropping like a piece of lead to the bottom of a lake.

In such a sleep a man is a prey to his acc.u.mulated weariness and the monstrous hallucinations which are forever prowling at the gates of his will. He tried to wake up, burning, broken, lost in the impenetrable darkness: he heard the clocks striking the half hours: he could not breathe, or think, or move: he was bound and gagged like a man flung into water to drown: he tried to struggle, but only sank down again.--Dawn came at length, the tardy gray dawn of a rainy day. The intolerable heat that consumed him grew less: but his body was pinned under the weight of a mountain. He woke up. It was a terrible awakening.

"Why open my eyes? Why wake up? Rather stay, like my poor friend, who is lying under the earth...."

He lay on his back and never moved, although he was cramped by his position in the bed: his legs and arms were heavy as stone. He was in a grave. A dim pale light. A few drops of rain dashed against the windows.

A bird in the garden was uttering a little plaintive cry. Oh! the misery of life! The cruel futility of it all!...

The hours crept by. Braun came in. Christophe did not turn his head.

Seeing his eyes open, Braun greeted him joyfully: and as Christophe went on grimly staring at the ceiling he tried to make him shake off his melancholy: he sat down on the bed and chattered noisily. Christophe could not bear the noise. He made an effort, superhuman it seemed to him, and said:

"Please leave me alone."

The good little man changed his tone at once.

"You want to be alone? Why, of course. Keep quiet. Rest, don't talk, we'll bring you up something to eat, and no one shall say a word."

But it was impossible for him to be brief. After endless explanations he tiptoed from the room with his huge slippers creaking on the floor.

Christophe was left alone once more, and sank back into his mortal weariness. His thoughts were veiled by the mist of suffering. He wore himself out in trying to understand.... "Why had he known him? Why had he loved him? What good had Antoinette's devotion been? What was the meaning of all the lives and generations,--so much experience and hope--ending in that life, dragged down with it into the void?"... Life was meaningless. Death was meaningless. A man was blotted out, shuffled out of existence, a whole family disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving no trace. Impossible to tell whether it is more odious or more grotesque. He burst into a fit of angry laughter, laughter of hatred and despair. His impotence in the face of such sorrow, his sorrow in the face of such impotence, were dragging him down to death. His heart was broken....

There was not a sound in the house, save the doctor's footsteps as he went out on his rounds. Christophe had lost all idea of the time, when Anna appeared. She brought him some dinner on a tray. He watched her without stirring, without even moving his lips to thank her: but in his staring eyes, which seemed to see nothing, the image of the young woman was graven with photographic clarity. Long afterwards, when he knew her better, it was always thus that he saw her: later impressions were never able to efface that first memory of her. She had thick hair done up in a heavy k.n.o.b, a bulging forehead, wide cheeks, a short, straight nose, eyes perpetually cast down, and when they met the eyes of another, they would turn away with an expression in which there was little frankness and small kindness: her lips were a trifle thick, and closely pressed together, and she had a stubborn, rather hard expression. She was tall, apparently big and well made, but her clothes were very stiff and tight, and she was cramped in her movements. She came silently and noiselessly and laid the tray on the table by the bed and went out again with her arms close to her sides and her head down. Christophe felt no surprise at her strange and rather absurd appearance: he did not touch his food and relapsed into his silent suffering.

The day pa.s.sed. Evening came and once more Anna with more food. She found the meal she had brought in the morning still untouched: and she took it away without a remark. She had none of those fond observations which all women seem instinctively to produce for the benefit of an invalid. It was as though Christophe did not exist for her, as though she herself hardly existed. This time Christophe felt a sort of dumb hostility as impatiently he followed her awkward hasty movements.

However, he was grateful to her for not trying to talk.--He was even more grateful to her when, after she had gone, he had to put up with the doctor's protestations, when he observed that Christophe had not touched the earlier meal. He was angry with his wife for not having forced Christophe to eat, and now tried to compel him to do so. For the sake of peace, Christophe had to gulp down a little milk. After that he turned his back on him.

The next night was more tranquil. Heavy sleep once more drew Christophe into its state of nothingness. Not a trace of hateful life was left.--But waking up was even more suffocating than before. He went on turning over and over all the details of the fateful day, Olivier's reluctance to leave the house, his urgent desire to go home, and he said to himself in despair:

"It was I who killed him...."

He could not bear to stay there any longer, shut up in that room, lying motionless beneath the claws of the fierce-eyed sphinx that went on battering him with its dizzy rain of questions and its deathlike breath.

He got up all in a fever: he dragged himself out of the room and went downstairs: in his instinctive fear he was driven to cling to other human creatures. And as soon as he heard another voice he felt a longing to rush away.

Braun was in the dining-room. He received Christophe with his usual demonstrations of friendship and at once began to ply him with questions as to what had happened in Paris. Christophe seized him by the arm:

"No," he said. "Don't ask me. Later on.... You mustn't mind. I can't, now. I'm dead tired, worn out...."

"I know, I know," said Braun kindly. "Your nerves are shaken. The emotions of the last few days. Don't talk. Don't put yourself out in any way. You are free, you are at home here. No one will worry about you."

He kept his word. By way of sparing his guest he went to the opposite extreme: he dared not even talk to his wife in Christophe's presence: he talked in whispers and walked about on tiptoe: the house became still and silent. Exasperated by the whispering and the silence and the affectation of it all, Christophe had to beg Braun to go on living just as he usually did.

For some days no one paid any attention to Christophe. He would sit for hours together in the corner of a room, or he would wander through the house like a man in a dream. What were his thoughts? He hardly knew. He hardly had even strength enough to suffer. He was crushed. The dryness of his heart was a horror to him. He had only one desire: to be buried with "him" and to make an end.--One day he found the garden-door open and went out. But it hurt him so much to be in the light of day that he returned hurriedly and shut himself up in his room with all the shutters closed. Fine days were torture to him. He hated the sun. The brutal serenity of Nature overwhelmed him. At meals he would eat in silence the food that Braun laid before him, and he would sit with never a word staring down at the table. One day Braun pointed to the piano in the drawing-room: Christophe turned from it in terror. Noise of any sort was detestable to him. Silence, silence, and the night!... There was nothing in him save an aching void, and a need of emptiness. Gone was his joy in life, gone the splendid bird of joy that once used to soar blithely, ecstatically upwards, pouring out song. There were days when, sitting in his room, he had no more feeling of life than the halting tic-tac of the clock in the next room, that seemed to be beating in his own brain. And yet, the wild bird of joy was still in him, it would suddenly take flight, and flutter against the bars of its cage: and in the depths of his soul there was a frightful tumult of sorrow--"the bitter cry of one living in the wilderness...."