The Tree of Heaven Part 29

Michael had no idea of what Germany could and would do to his soul.

Otherwise he might have listened to what Paris had to say by way of warning.

For his father had given him a fortnight in Paris on his way to Germany, as the reward of acquiescence. That (from Herr Harrison's point of view) was a disastrous blunder. How could the dear old Pater be expected to know that Paris is, spiritually speaking, no sort of way even to South Germany? He should have gone to Brussels, if he was ever, spiritually speaking, to get there at all.

And neither Anthony nor Frances knew that Lawrence Stephen had plans for Michael.

Michael went to Paris with his unpublished poems in his pocket and a letter of introduction from Stephen to Jules Reveillaud. He left it with revolution in his soul and the published poems of Reveillaud and his followers in his suit-case, straining and distending it so that it burst open of its own accord at the frontier.

Lawrence Stephen had said to him: "Before you write another line read Reveillaud and show him what you've written."

Jules Reveillaud was ten years older than Michael, and he recognized the symptoms of the crisis. He could see what was happening and what had happened and would happen in Michael's soul. He said: "One third of each of your poems is good. And there are a few--the three last--which are all good."

"Those," said Michael, "are only experiments."

"Precisely. They are experiments that have succeeded. That is why they are good. Art is always experiment, or it is nothing. Do not publish these poems yet. Wait and see what happens. Make more experiments. And whatever you do, do not go to Germany. That School of Forestry would be very bad for you. Why not," said Reveillaud, "stay where you are?"

Michael would have liked to stay for ever where he was, in Paris with Jules Reveillaud, in the Rue Servandoni. And because his conscience kept on telling him that he would be a coward and a blackguard if he stayed in Paris, he wrenched himself away.

In the train, going into Germany, he read Reveillaud's "Poemes" and the "Poemes" of the young men who followed him. He had read in Paris Reveillaud's "Critique de la Poesie Anglaise Contemporaine." And as he read his poems, he saw that, though he, Michael Harrison, had split with "la poesie anglaise contemporaine," he was not, as he had supposed, alone. His idea of being by himself of finding new forms, doing new things by himself to the disgust and annoyance of other people, in a world where only one person, Lawrence Stephen, understood or cared for what he did, it was pure illusion. These young Frenchmen, with Jules Reveillaud at their head, were doing the same thing, making the same experiment, believing in the experiment, caring for nothing but the experiment, and carrying it farther than he had dreamed of carrying it.

They were not so far ahead of him in time; Reveillaud himself had only two years' start; but they were all going the same way, and he saw that he must either go with them or collapse in the soft heap of rottenness, "la poesie anglaise contemporaine."

He had made his own experiments in what he called "live verse" before he left England, after he had said he would go to Germany, even after the final arrangements had been made. His father had given him a month to "turn round in," as he put it. And Michael had turned completely round.

He had not shown his experiments to Stephen. He didn't know what to think of them himself. But he could see, when once Reveillaud had pointed it out to him, that they were the stuff that counted.

In the train going into Germany he thought of certain things that Reveillaud had said: "Nous avons trempe la poesie dans la peinture et la musique. Il faut la delivrer par la sculpture. Chaque ligne, chaque vers, chaque poeme taille en bloc, sans couleur, sans decor, sans rime."... "La sainte pauvresse du style depouille."... "Il faut de la durete, toujours de la durete."

He thought of Reveillaud's criticism, and his sudden startled spurt of admiration: "Mais! Vous l'avez trouvee, la beaute de la ligne droite."

And Reveillaud's question: "Vraiment? Vous n'avez jamais lu un seul vers de mes poemes? Alors, c'est etonnant." And then: "C'est que la realite est plus forte que nous."

The revolting irony of it! After stumbling and fumbling for years by himself, like an idiot, trying to get it, the clear hard Reality; trying not to collapse into the soft heap of contemporary rottenness; and, suddenly, to get it without knowing that he had got it, so that, but for Reveillaud, he might easily have died in his ignorance; and then, in the incredible moment of realization, to have to let go, to turn his back on Paris, where he wanted to live, and on Reveillaud whom he wanted to know, and to be packed in a d.a.m.nable train, like a parcel, and sent off to Germany, a country which he did not even wish to see.

He wondered if he could have done it if he had not loved his father? He wondered if his father would ever understand that it was the hardest thing he had ever yet done or could do?

But the trees would be beautiful. He would rather like seeing the trees.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever care about a tree again.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever see a tree again, ever smell tree-sap, or hear the wind sounding in the ash-trees like a river and in the firs like a sea.

Trees--

He wondered whether any tree would ever come to life for him again.

He looked on at the tree-felling. He saw slaughtered trees, trees that tottered, trees that staggered in each other's branches. He heard the scream and the shriek of wounded boughs, the creaking and crashing of the trunk, and the long hiss of branches falling, trailing through branches to the ground. He smelt the raw juice of broken leaves and the sharp tree dust in the saw pits. The trees died horrible deaths, in the forests under the axes of the woodmen, and in the schools under the tongues of the Professors, and in Michael's soul. The German Government was determined that he should know all about trees. Its officials, the Professors and instructors, were sorry if he didn't like it, but they were ordered by their Government and paid by their Government to impart this information; they had contracted with Herr Harrison to impart it to his son Michael for so long as he could endure it, and they imparted it with all their might.

Michael rather liked the Germans of Aschaffenburg. Instead of despising him because he would never make a timber-merchant or a tree expert, they admired and respected him because he was a poet. The family he lived with, Herr Henschel and Frau Henschel, and his fellow-boarders, Carl and Otto Kraus, and young Ludwig Henschel, and Hedwig and Lottchen admired and respected him because he was a poet. When he walked with Ludwig in the great forests Michael chanted his poems, both in English and in German, till Ludwig's soul was full of yearning and a delicious sorrow, so that Ludwig actually shed tears in the forest. He said that if he had not done so he would have burst. Ludwig's emotions had nothing whatever to do with the forest or with Michael's poems, but he thought they had.

Michael knew that his only chance of getting out of Germany was to show an unsurpa.s.sable incompetence. He showed it. He flourished his incompetence in the faces of all the officials, until some superofficial wrote a letter to his father that gave him his liberty.

The Henschels were sorry when he left. The students, Otto and Carl and Ludwig, implored him not to forget them. Hedwig and Lottchen cried.

Michael was not pleased when he found that he was to go home by Dresden to bring Veronica back. He wanted to be alone on the journey. He wanted to stop in Paris and see Jules Reveillaud. He was afraid that Ronny had grown into a tiresome flapper and that he would have to talk to her.

And he found that Ronny had skipped the tiresome stage and had grown up.

Only her school clothes and her girlish door-knocker plait tied up with broad black ribbon reminded him that she was not yet seventeen.

Ronny was tired. She did not want to talk. When he had tucked her up with railway rugs in her corner of the carriage she sat still with her hands in her m.u.f.f.

"I shall not disturb your thoughts, Michael," she said.

She knew what he had been thinking. Her clear eyes gazed at him out of her dead white face with an awful look of spiritual maturity.

"What can have happened to her?" he wondered.

But she did not disturb his thoughts.

Up till then Michael's thoughts had not done him any good. They had been bitter thoughts of the months he had been compelled to waste in Bavaria when every minute had an incomparable value; worrying, irritating thoughts of the scenes he would have to have with his father, who must be made to understand, once for all, that in future he meant to have every minute of his own life for his own work. He wondered how on earth he was to make his people see that his work justified his giving every minute to it. He had asked Reveillaud to give him a letter that he could show to his father. He was angry with his father beforehand, he was so certain that he wouldn't see.

He had other thoughts now. Thoughts of an almond tree flowering in a white town; of pink blossoms, fragile, without leaves, casting a thin shadow on white stones; the smell of almond flowers and the sting of white dust in an east wind; a drift of white dust against the wall.

Thoughts of pine-trees falling in the forest, glad to fall. He thought: The pine forest makes itself a sea for the land wind, and the young pine tree is mad for the open sea. She gives her slender trunk with pa.s.sion to the ax; for she thinks that she will be stripped naked, and that she will be planted in the ship's hold, and that she will carry the great main-sail. She thinks that she will rock and strain in the grip of the sea-wind, and that she will be whitened with the salt and the foam of the sea.

She does not know that she will be sawn into planks and made into a coffin for the wife of the s.e.xton and grave-digger of Aschaffenburg.

Thoughts of Veronica in her incredible maturity, and of her eyes, shining in her dead white face, far back through deep crystal, and of the sense he got of her soul poised, steady and still, with wings vibrating.

He wondered where it would come down.

He thought: "Of course, Veronica's soul will come down like a wild pigeon into the ash-tree in our garden, and she will think that our ash-tree is a tree of Heaven."

Presently he roused himself to talk to her.

"How is your singing getting on, Ronny?"

"My singing voice has gone."

"It'll come back again."