Jean-Christophe Journey's End Part 58

Distance gave her more freedom of speech, and also, the certain knowledge that she would never be his. Her love, the religious fervor of which was communicated to Christophe, was a fountain of force and peace to him.

Grazia gave to others more of such force and peace than she had herself.

Her health was shattered, her moral balance seriously affected. Her son's condition did not improve. For the last two years she had lived in a perpetual state of anxiety, aggravated by Lionello's fatal skill in playing on it. He had acquired a consummate mastery of the art of keeping those who loved him on tenterhooks: his idle mind was most fertile in inventing ways of rousing interest in himself and tormenting others: it had become a mania with him. And the tragedy of it was, that, while he aped the ravages of disease, the disease did make real inroads upon him, and death peeped forth. Then the expected happened: Grazia, having been tortured by her son for years with his imaginary illness, ceased to believe in it when the illness really came. The heart has its limitations. She had exhausted her store of pity over his lies. She thought Lionello was still a comedian when he spoke the truth. And when the truth was revealed to her, the rest of her life was poisoned by remorse.

Lionello's malice had not laid aside its weapons. Having no love for any one in the world, he could not bear any of those near him to feel love for any one else: jealousy was his only pa.s.sion. It was not enough for him to have separated his mother and Christophe: he tried to force her to break off the intimacy which subsisted between them. Already he had employed his usual weapon--his illness--to make Grazia swear that she would not marry again. He was not satisfied with her promise. He tried to force his mother to give up writing to Christophe. On this she rebelled; and, being delivered by such an attempted abuse of power, she spoke harshly and severely to Lionello about his habit of lying, and, later on, regarded herself as a criminal for having done so: for her words flung Lionello into a fit of fury which made him really ill. His illness grew worse as he saw that his mother did not believe in it.

Then, in his fury, he longed to die so as to avenge himself. He never thought that his wish would be granted.

When the doctor told Grazia that there was no hope for her son, she was dumfounded. But she had to disguise her despair in order to deceive the boy who had so often deceived her. He had a suspicion that this time it was serious, but he refused to believe it; and his eyes watched his mother's eyes for the reproachful expression that had infuriated him when he was lying. There came a time when there was no room for doubt.

Then it was terrible, both for him and his mother and sister: he did not wish to die....

When at last Grazia saw him sinking to sleep, she gave no cry and made no moan: she astonished those about her by her silence: she had no strength left for suffering: she had only one desire, to sleep also.

However, she went about the business of her life with the same apparent calm. After a few weeks her smile returned to her lips, but she was more silent still. No one suspected her inward distress, Christophe least of all. She had only written to tell him the news, without a word of herself. She did not answer Christophe's anxiously affectionate letters.

He wanted to come to her: she begged him not to. At the end of two or three months, she resumed her old grave, serene tone with him. She would have thought it criminal to put upon him the burden of her weakness. She knew how the echo of all her feelings reverberated in him, and how great was his need to lean on her. She did not impose upon herself the restraint of sorrow. This discipline was her salvation. In her weariness of life only two things gave her life: Christophe's love, and the fatalism, which, in sorrow as in joy, lay at the heart of her Italian nature. There was nothing intellectual in her fatalism: it was the animal instinct, which makes a hunted beast go on, with no consciousness of fatigue, in a staring wide-eyed dream, forgetting the stones of the road, forgetting its own body, until it falls. Her fatalism sustained her body. Love sustained her heart. Now that her own life was worn out, she lived in Christophe. And yet she was more scrupulous than ever never in her letters to tell him of the love she had for him: no doubt because her love was greater: but also because she was conscious of the _veto_ of the dead boy, who had made her affection a crime. Then she would relapse into silence, and refrain from writing for a time.

Christophe did not understand her silence. Sometimes in the composed and tranquil tone of one of her letters he would be conscious of an unexpected note that seemed to be quivering with pa.s.sionate moaning.

That would prostrate him: but he dared not say anything: he hardly dared to notice it: he was like a man holding his breath, afraid to breathe, for fear of destroying an illusion. He knew almost infallibly that in the next letter such notes as these would be atoned for by a deliberate coldness. Then, once more, tranquillity ... _Meeresstille_....

Georges and Emmanuel met at Christophe's one afternoon. Both were preoccupied with their own troubles: Emmanuel with his literary disappointments, and Georges with some athletic failure. Christophe listened to them good-humoredly and teased them affectionately. There was a ring at the door. Georges went to open it. A servant had come with a letter from Colette. Christophe stood by the window to read it. His friends went on with their discussion, and did not see Christophe, whose back was turned to them. He left the room without their noticing it. And when they realized that he had done so, they were not surprised. But as time pa.s.sed and he did not return, Georges went and knocked at the door of the next room. There was no reply. Georges did not persist, for he knew his old friend's queer ways. A few minutes later Christophe returned without a word. He seemed very calm, very kind, very gentle. He begged their pardon for leaving them, took up the conversation where he had left it, and spoke kindly about their troubles, and said many helpful things. The tone of his voice moved them, though they knew not why.

They left him. Georges went straight to Colette's, and found her in tears. As soon as she saw him she came swiftly to him and asked:

"How did our poor friend take the blow? It is terrible."

Georges did not understand. And Colette told him that she had just sent Christophe the news of Grazia's death.

She was gone, without having had time to say farewell to anybody. For several months past the roots of her life had been almost torn out of the earth: a puff of wind was enough to lay it low. On the evening before the relapse of influenza which carried her off she received a long, kind letter from Christophe. It had filled her with tenderness, and she longed to bid him come to her: she felt that everything else, everything that kept them apart, was absurd and culpable. She was very weary, and put off writing to him until the next day. On the day after she had to stay in bed. She began a letter which she did not finish: she had an attack of giddiness, and her head swam: besides, she was reluctant to speak of her illness, and was afraid of troubling Christophe. He was busy at the time with rehearsals of a choral symphony set to a poem of Emmanuel's: the subject had roused them both to enthusiasm, for it was something symbolical of their own destiny: _The Promised Land_. Christophe had often mentioned it to Grazia. The first performance was to take place the following week.... She must not upset him. In her letter Grazia just spoke of a slight cold. Then that seemed too much to her. She tore up the letter, and had no strength left to begin another. She told herself that she would write in the evening.

When the evening came it was too late--too late to bid him come, too late even to write.... How swiftly everything pa.s.ses! A few hours are enough to destroy the labor of ages.... Grazia hardly had time to give her daughter a ring she wore and beg her to send it to her friend. Till then she had not been very intimate with Aurora. Now that her life was ebbing away, she gazed pa.s.sionately at the face of the girl: she clung to the hand that would pa.s.s on the pressure of her own, and, joyfully, she thought:

"Not all of me will pa.s.s away."

_"Quid? hic, inquam, quis est qui complet aures meas tantus et tam dulcis sonus?..."--(The Dream of Scipio.)_

When he left Colette, on an impulse of sympathy Georges went back to Christophe's. For a long time, through Colette's indiscretions, he had known the place that Grazia filled in his old friend's heart: he had even--(for youth is not respectful)--made fun of it. But now generously and keenly he felt the sorrow that Christophe must be feeling at such a loss; and he felt that he must go to him, embrace him, pity him. Knowing the violence of his pa.s.sions,--the tranquillity that Christophe had shown made him anxious. He rang the bell. No answer. He rang once more and knocked, giving the signal agreed between Christophe and himself. He heard the moving of a chair and a slow, heavy tread. Christophe opened the door. His face was so calm that Georges stopped still, just as he was about to fling himself into his arms: he knew not what to say.

Christophe asked him gently:

"You, my boy. Have you forgotten something?"

Georges muttered uneasily:

"Yes."

"Come in."

Christophe went and sat in the chair he had left on Georges's arrival, near the window, with his head thrown back, looking at the roofs opposite and the reddening evening sky. He paid no attention to Georges.

The young man pretended to look about on the table, while he stole glances at Christophe. His face was set: the beams of the setting sun lit up his cheek-bones and his forehead. Mechanically Georges went into the next room--the bedroom--as though he were still looking for something. It was in this room that Christophe had shut himself up with the letter. It was still there on the bed, which bore the imprint of a body. On the floor lay a book that had slipped down. It had been left open with a page crumpled. Georges picked it up, and read the story of the meeting of the Magdalene and the Gardener in the Gospel.

He came back into the living-room, and moved a few things here and there to gain countenance, and once more he looked at Christophe, who had not budged. He longed to tell him how he pitied him. But Christophe was so radiant with light that Georges felt that it was out of place to speak.

It was rather himself who stood in need of consolation. He said timidly:

"I am going."

Without turning his head, Christophe said:

"Good-by, my boy."

Georges went away and closed the door without a sound.

For a long time Christophe sat there. Night came. He was not suffering: he was not thinking: he saw no definite image. He was like a tired man listening to some vague music without making any attempt to understand it. The night was far gone when he got up, cramped and stiff. He flung himself on his bed and slept heavily. The symphony went on buzzing all around him....

And now he saw _her_, the well-beloved.... She held out her hands to him, and said, smiling:

"Now you have pa.s.sed through the zone of fire."

Then his heart melted. An indescribable peace filled the starry s.p.a.ces, where the music of the spheres flung out its great, still, profound sheets of water....

When he awoke (it was day), his strange happiness still endured, with the distant gleam of words falling upon his ears. He got up. He was exalted with a silent, holy enthusiasm.

"... _Or vedi, figlio, tra Beatrice e te e questo muro...."_

Between Beatrice and himself, the wall was broken down. For a long time now more than half his soul had dwelt upon the other side. The more a man lives, the more a man creates, the more a man loves and loses those whom he loves, the more does he escape from death. With every new blow that we have to bear, with every new work that we round and finish, we escape from ourselves, we escape into the work we have created, the soul we have loved, the soul that has left us. When all is told, Rome is not in Rome: the best of a man lies outside himself. Only Grazia had withheld him on this side of the wall. And now in her turn.... Now the door was shut upon the world of sorrow.

He lived through a period of secret exaltation. He felt the weight of no fetters. He expected nothing of the things of this world. He was dependent upon nothing. He was set free. The struggle was at an end.

Issuing from the zone of combat and the circle where reigned the G.o.d of heroic conflict, _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_, he looked down, and in the night saw the torch of the Burning Bush put out. How far away it was!

When it had lit up his path he had thought himself almost at the summit.

And since then, how far he had had to go! And yet the topmost pinnacle seemed no nearer. He would never reach it (he saw that now), though he were to march on to eternity. But when a man enters the circle of light and knows that he has not left those he loves behind him, eternity is not too long a s.p.a.ce to be journeying on with them.

He closed his doors. No one knocked. Georges had expended all his compa.s.sion and sympathy in the one impulse; he was rea.s.sured by the time he reached home, and forgot all about it by the next day. Colette had gone to Rome. Emmanuel knew nothing, and hypersensitive as usual, he maintained an affronted silence because Christophe had not returned his visit. Christophe was not disturbed in his long colloquy with the woman whom he now bore in his soul, as a pregnant woman bears her precious burden. It was a moving intercourse, impossible to translate into words.

Even music could hardly express it. When his heart was full, almost overflowing, Christophe would lie still with eyes closed, and listen to its song. Or, for hours together, he would sit at his piano and let his fingers speak. During this period he improvised more than he had done in the whole of his life. He did not set down his thoughts. What was the good?

When, after several weeks, he took to going out again and seeing other men, while none of his friends, except Georges, had any suspicion of what had happened, the daimon of improvisation pursued him still. It would take possession of Christophe just when he was least expecting it.

One evening, at Colette's, Christophe sat down at the piano and played for nearly an hour, absolutely surrendering himself, and forgetting that the room was full of strangers. They had no desire to laugh. His terrible improvisations enslaved and overwhelmed them. Even those who did not understand their meaning were thrilled and moved: and tears came to Colette's eyes.... When Christophe had finished he turned away abruptly: he saw how everybody was moved, and shrugged his shoulders, and--laughed.

He had reached the point at which sorrow also becomes a force--a dominant force. His sorrow possessed him no more: he possessed his sorrow: in vain it fluttered and beat upon its bars: he kept it caged.

From that period date his most poignant and his happiest works: a scene from the Gospel which Georges recognized--

"_Mulier, quid ploras?"--"Quia tulerunt Dominium meum, et nescio ubi posuerunt eum."

Et c.u.m hoec dixisset, conversa est retrorsum, et vidit Jesum stantem: et non sciebat quia Jesus est_.

--a series of tragic _lieder_ set to verses of popular Spanish _cantares_, among others a gloomy sad love-song, like a black flame--

"_Quisiera ser el sepulcro Donde a ti te han de enterrar, Para tenerte en mis brazos Por toda la eternidad_."

("Would I were the grave, where thou art to be buried, that I might hold thee in my arms through all eternity.")

--and two symphonies, called _The Island of Tranquillity_ and _The Dream of Scipio_, in which, more intimately than in any other of the works of Jean-Christophe Krafft, is realized the union of the most beautiful of the forces of the music of his time: the affectionate and wise thought of Germany with all its shadowy windings, the clear pa.s.sionate melody of Italy, and the quick mind of France, rich in subtle rhythms and variegated harmonies.