father drunk, and to be beaten, to suffer in so many ways from the
wickedness of other children, from the insulting pity of grown-up persons,
and to be understood by no one, not even by your mother. Everybody
humiliates you, no one loves you. You are alone--alone, and matter so
little! Yes; but it was just this that made him want to live. He felt in
himself a surging power of wrath. A strange thing, that power! It could do
nothing yet; it was as though it were afar off and gagged, swaddled,
paralyzed; he had no idea what it wanted, what, later on, it would be. But
it was in him; he was sure of it; he felt it stirring and crying out.
To-morrow--to-morrow, what a voyage he would take! He had a savage desire
to live, to punish the wicked, to do great things. "Oh! but how I will live
when I am ..." he pondered a little--"when I am eighteen!" Sometimes he put
it at twenty-one; that was the extreme limit. He thought that was enough
for the domination of the world. He thought of the heroes dearest to
him--of Napoleon, and of that other more remote hero, whom he preferred,
Alexander the Great. Surely he would be like them if only he lived for
another twelve--ten years. He never thought of pitying those who died at
thirty. They were old; they had lived their lives; it was their fault if
they hat failed. But to die now ... despair! Too terrible to pass while yet
a little child, and forever to be in the minds of men a little boy whom
everybody thinks he has the right to scold! He wept with rage at the
thought, as though he were already dead.
This agony of death tortured his childish years--corrected only by disgust
with all life and the sadness of his own.
* * * * *
It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that
every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like
a star lost in the dark abysm of space, the light which was to illuminate
his life: divine music....
His grandfather gave the children an old piano, which one of his clients,
anxious to be rid of it, had asked him to take. His patient ingenuity had
almost put it in order. The present had not been very well received. Louisa
thought her room already too small, without filling it up any more; and
Melchior said that Jean Michel had not ruined himself over it: just
firewood. Only Jean-Christophe was glad of it without exactly knowing why.
It seemed to him a magic box, full of marvelous stories, just like the ones
in the fairy-book--a volume of the "Thousand and One Nights"--which his
grandfather read to him sometimes to their mutual delight. He had heard his
father try the piano on the day of its arrival, and draw from it a little
rain of arpeggios like the drops that a puff of wind shakes from the wet
branches of a tree after a shower. He clapped his hands, and cried
"Encore!" but Melchior scornfully closed the piano, saying that it was
worthless. Jean-Christophe did not insist, but after that he was always
hovering about the instrument. As soon as no one was near he would raise
the lid, and softly press down a key, just as if he were moving with his
finger the living shell of some great insect; he wanted to push out the
creature that was locked up in it. Sometimes in his haste he would strike
too hard, and then his mother would cry out, "Will you not be quiet? Don't
go touching everything!" or else he would pinch himself cruelly in closing
the piano, and make piteous faces as he sucked his bruised fingers....
Now his greatest joy is when his mother is gone out for a day's service, or
to pay some visit in the town. He listens as she goes down the stairs, and
into the street, and away. He is alone. He opens the piano, and brings up a
chair, and perches on it. His shoulders just about reach the keyboard; it
is enough for what he wants. Why does he wait until he is alone? No one
would prevent his playing so long as he did not make too much noise. But he
is ashamed before the others, and dare not. And then they talk and move
about: that spoils his pleasure. It is so much more beautiful when he is
alone! Jean-Christophe holds his breath so that the silence may be even
greater, and also because he is a little excited, as though he were going
to let off a gun. His heart beats as he lays his finger on the key;
sometimes he lifts his finger after he has the key half pressed down, and
lays it on another. Does he know what will come out of it, more than what
will come out of the other? Suddenly a sound issues from it; there are deep
sounds and high sounds, some tinkling, some roaring. The child listens to
them one by one as they die away and finally cease to be; they hover in the
air like bells heard far off, coming near in the wind, and then going away
again; then when you listen you hear in the distance other voices,
different, joining in and droning like flying insects; they seem to call to
you, to draw you away farther--farther and farther into the mysterious
regions, where they dive down and are lost.... They are gone!... No; still
they murmur.... A little beating of wings.... How strange it all is! They
are like spirits. How is it that they are so obedient? how is it that they
are held captive in this old box? But best of all is when you lay two
fingers on two keys at once. Then you never know exactly what will happen.
Sometimes the two spirits are hostile; they are angry with each other, and
fight; and hate each other, and buzz testily. Then voices are raised; they
cry out, angrily, now sorrowfully. Jean-Christophe adores that; it is as
though there were monsters chained up, biting at their fetters, beating
against the bars of their prison; they are like to break them, and burst
out like the monsters in the fairy-book--the genii imprisoned in the Arab
bottles under the seal of Solomon. Others flatter you; they try to cajole
you, but you feel that they only want to bite, that they are hot and
fevered. Jean-Christophe does not know what they want, but they lure him
and disturb him; they make him almost blush. And sometimes there are notes
that love each other; sounds embrace, as people do with their arms when
they kiss: they are gracious and sweet. These are the good spirits; their
faces are smiling, and there are no lines in them; they love little
Jean-Christophe, and little Jean-Christophe loves them. Tears come to his
eyes as he hears them, and he is never weary of calling them up. They are
his friends, his dear, tender friends....
So the child journeys through the forest of sounds, and round him he is
conscious of thousands of forces lying in wait for him, and calling to him
to caress or devour him....
One day Melchior came upon him thus. He made him jump with fear at the
sound of his great voice. Jean-Christophe, thinking he was doing wrong,
quickly put his hands up to his ears to ward off the blows he feared. But
Melchior did not scold him, strange to say; he was in a good temper, and
laughed.
"You like that, boy?" he asked, patting his head kindly. "Would you like me
to teach you to play it?"
Would he like!... Delighted, he murmured: "Yes." The two of them sat down
at the piano, Jean-Christophe perched this time on a pile of big books, and
very attentively he took his first lesson. He learned first of all that the
buzzing spirits have strange names, like Chinese names, of one syllable, or
even of one letter. He was astonished; he imagined them to be different
from that: beautiful, caressing names, like the princesses in the fairy
stories. He did not like the familiarity with which his father talked of
them. Again, when Melchior evoked them they were not the same; they seemed
to become indifferent as they rolled out from under his fingers. But
Jean-Christophe was glad to learn about the relationships between them,
their hierarchy, the scales, which were like a King commanding an army, or
like a band of negroes marching in single file. He was surprised to see
that each soldier, or each negro, could become a monarch in his turn, or
the head of a similar band, and that it was possible to summon whole
battalions from one end to the other of the keyboard. It amused him to hold
the thread which made them march. But it was a small thing compared with
what he had seen at first; his enchanted forest was lost. However, he set
himself to learn, for it was not tiresome, and he was surprised at his
father's patience. Melchior did not weary of it either; he made him begin
the same thing over again ten times. Jean-Christophe did not understand why
he should take so much trouble; his father loved him, then? That was good!
The boy worked away; his heart was filled with gratitude.
He would have been less docile had he known what thoughts were springing
into being in his father's head.
* * * * *
From that day on Melchior took him to the house of a neighbor, where three
times a week there was chamber music. Melchior played first violin, Jean
Michel the violoncello. The other two were a bank-clerk and the old
watchmaker of the _Schillerstrasse_. Every now and then the chemist joined
them with his flute. They began at five, and went on till nine. Between
each piece they drank beer. Neighbors used to come in and out, and listen
without a word, leaning against the wall, and nodding their heads, and
beating time with their feet, and filling the room with clouds of
tobacco-smoke. Page followed page, piece followed piece, but the patience
of the musicians was never exhausted. They did not speak; they were all
attention; their brows were knit, and from time to time they grunted with
pleasure, but for the rest they were perfectly incapable not only of
expressing, but even of feeling, the beauty of what they played. They
played neither very accurately nor in good time, but they never went off
the rails, and followed faithfully the marked changes of tone. They had
that musical facility which is easily satisfied, that mediocre perfection
which, is so plentiful in the race which is said to be the most musical in
the world. They had also that great appetite which does not stickle for the
quality of its food, so only there be quantity--that healthy appetite to
which all music is good, and the more substantial the better--it sees no
difference between Brahms and Beethoven, or between the works of the same
master, between an empty concerto and a moving sonata, because they are
fashioned of the same stuff.
Jean-Christophe sat apart in a corner, which was his own, behind the piano.
No one could disturb him there, for to reach it he had to go on all fours.
It was half dark there, and the boy had just room to lie on the floor if he
huddled up. The smoke of the tobacco filled his eyes and throat: dust, too;
there were large flakes of it like sheepskin, but he did not mind that, and
listened gravely, squatting there Turkish fashion, and widening the holes
in the cloth of the piano with his dirty little fingers. He did not like
everything that they played; but nothing that they played bored him, and he
never tried to formulate his opinions, for he thought himself too small to
know anything. Only some music sent him to sleep, some woke him up; it was
never disagreeable to him. Without his knowing it, it was nearly always
good music that excited him. Sure of not being seen, he made faces, he
wrinkled his nose, ground his teeth, or stuck out his tongue; his eyes
flashed with anger or drooped languidly; he moved his arms and legs with a
defiant and valiant air; he wanted to march, to lunge out, to pulverize the
world. He fidgeted so much that in the end a head would peer over the
piano, and say: "Hullo, boy, are you mad? Leave the piano.... Take your
hand away, or I'll pull your ears!" And that made him crestfallen and
angry. Why did they want to spoil his pleasure? He was not doing any harm.
Must he always be tormented! His father chimed in. They chid him for making
a noise, and said that he did not like music. And in the end he believed
it. These honest citizens grinding out concertos would have been astonished
if they had been told that the only person in the company who really felt
the music was the little boy.
If they wanted him to keep quiet, why did they play airs which make you
march? In those pages were rearing horses, swords, war-cries, the pride of
triumph; and they wanted him, like them, to do no more than wag his head
and beat time with his feet! They had only to play placid dreams or some of
those chattering pages which talk so much and say nothing. There are plenty
of them, for example, like that piece of Goldmark's, of which the old
watchmaker had just said with a delighted smile: "It is pretty. There is no
harshness in it. All the corners are rounded off...." The boy was very
quiet then. He became drowsy. He did not know what they were playing hardly
heard it; but he was happy; his limbs were numbed, and he was dreaming.
His dreams were not a consecutive story; they had neither head nor tail. It
was rarely that he saw a definite picture; his mother making a cake, and
with a knife removing the paste that clung to her fingers; a water-rat that
he had seen the night before swimming in the river; a whip that he wanted
to make with a willow wand.... Heaven knows why these things should have
cropped up in his memory at such a time! But most often he saw nothing at
all, and yet he felt things innumerable and infinite. It was as though
there were a number of very important things not to be spoken of, or not
worth speaking of, because they were so well known, and because they had
always been so. Some of them were sad, terribly sad; but there was nothing
painful in them, as there is in the things that belong to real life; they
were not ugly and debasing, like the blows that Jean-Christophe had from
his father, or like the things that were in his head when, sick at heart
with shame, he thought of some humiliation; they filled the mind with a
melancholy calm. And some were bright and shining, shedding torrents of
joy. And Jean-Christophe thought: "Yes, it is _thus_--thus that I will do
by-and-by." He did not know exactly what _thus_ was, nor why he said it,
but he felt that he had to say it, and that it was clear as day. He heard
the sound of a sea, and he was quite near to it, kept from it only by a
wall of dunes. Jean-Christophe had no idea what sea it was, or what it
wanted with him, but he was conscious that it would rise above the barrier
of dunes. And then!... Then all would be well, and he would be quite happy.
Nothing to do but to hear it, then, quite near, to sink to sleep to the
sound of its great voice, soothing away all his little griefs and
humiliations. They were sad still, but no longer shameful nor injurious;
everything seemed natural and almost sweet.
Very often it was mediocre music that produced this intoxication in him.
The writers of it were poor devils, with no thought in their heads but the
gaining of money, or the hiding away of the emptiness of their lives by
tagging notes together according to accepted formulæ--or to be original, in
defiance of formulæ. But in the notes of music, even when handled by an
idiot, there is such a power of life that they can let loose storms in a
simple soul. Perhaps even the dreams suggested by the idiots are more
mysterious and more free than those breathed by an imperious thought which
drags you along by force; for aimless movement and empty chatter do not
disturb the mind in its own pondering....
So, forgotten and forgetting, the child stayed in his corner behind the
piano, until suddenly he felt ants climbing up his legs. And he remembered
then that he was a little boy wife dirty nails, and that he was rubbing his
nose against a white-washed wall, and holding his feet in his hands.
On the day when Melchior, stealing on tiptoe, had surprised the boy at the
keyboard that was too high for him, he had stayed to watch him for a
moment, and suddenly there had flashed upon him: "A little prodigy!... Why
had he not thought of it?... What luck for the family!..." No doubt he had
thought that the boy would be a little peasant like his mother. "It would
cost nothing to try. What a great thing it would be! He would take him all
over Germany, perhaps abroad. It would be a jolly life, and noble to boot."
Melchior never failed to look for the nobility hidden in all he did, for it
was not often that he failed to find it, after some reflection.
Strong in this assurance, immediately after supper, as soon as he had taken
his last mouthful, he dumped the child once more in front of the piano, and
made him go through the day's lesson until his eyes closed in weariness.
Then three times the next day. Then the day after that. Then every day.
Jean-Christophe soon tired of it; then he was sick to death of it; finally
he could stand it no more, and tried to revolt against it. There was no
point in what he was made to do: nothing but learning to run as fast as
possible over the keys, by loosening the thumb, or exercising the fourth
finger, which would cling awkwardly to the two next to it. It got on his
nerves; there was nothing beautiful in it. There was an end of the magic
sounds, and fascinating monsters, and the universe of dreams felt in one
moment.... Nothing but scales and exercises--dry, monotonous, dull--duller
than the conversation at meal-time, which was always the same--always about
the dishes, and always the same dishes. At first the child listened
absently to what his father said. When he was severely reprimanded he went
on with a bad grace. He paid no attention to abuse; he met it with bad
temper. The last straw was when one evening he heard Melchior unfold his
plans in the next room. So it was in order to put him on show like a trick
animal that he was so badgered and forced every day to move bits of ivory!
He was not even given time to go and see his beloved river. What was it
made them so set against him? He was angry, hurt in his pride, robbed of
his liberty. He decided that he would play no more, or as badly as
possible, and would discourage his father. It would be hard, but at all
costs he must keep his independence.
The very next lesson he began to put his plan into execution. He set
himself conscientiously to hit the notes awry, or to bungle every touch.
Melchior cried out, then roared, and blows began to rain. He had a heavy
ruler. At every false note he struck the boy's fingers, and at the same
time shouted in his ears, so that he was like to deafen him.
Jean-Christophe's face twitched tinder the pain of it; he bit his lips to
keep himself from crying, and stoically went on hitting the notes all
wrong, bobbing his head down whenever he felt a blow coming. But his system
was not good, and it was not long before he began to see that it was so.
Melchior was as obstinate as his son, and he swore that even if they were
to stay there two days and two nights he would not let him off a single
note until it had been properly played. Then Jean-Christophe tried too
deliberately to play wrongly, and Melchior began to suspect the trick, as
he saw that the boy's hand fell heavily to one side at every note with
obvious intent. The blows became more frequent; Jean-Christophe was no
longer conscious of his fingers. He wept pitifully and silently, sniffing,
and swallowing down his sobs and tears. He understood that he had nothing
to gain by going on like that, and that he would have to resort to
desperate measures. He stopped, and, trembling at the thought of the storm
which was about to let loose, he said valiantly:
"Papa, I won't play any more."
Melchior choked.
"What! What!..." he cried.
He took and almost broke the boy's arm with shaking it. Jean-Christophe,
trembling more and more, and raising his elbow to ward off the blows, said
again:
"I won't play any more. First, because I don't like being beaten. And
then...."
He could not finish. A terrific blow knocked the wind out of him, and
Melchior roared:
"Ah! you don't like being beaten? You don't like it?..."
Blows rained. Jean-Christophe bawled through his sobs:
"And then ... I don't like music!... I don't like music!..."
He slipped down from his chair. Melchior roughly put him back, and knocked
his knuckles against the keyboard. He cried:
"You shall play!"
And Jean-Christophe shouted:
"No! No! I won't play!"
Melchior had to surrender. He thrashed the boy, thrust him from the room,
and said that he should have nothing to eat all day, or the whole month,
until he had played all his exercises without a mistake. He kicked him out
and slammed the door after him,
Jean-Christophe found himself on the stairs, the dark and dirty stairs,
worm-eaten. A draught came through a broken pane in the skylight, and the
walls were dripping. Jean-Christophe sat on one of the greasy steps; his
heart was beating wildly with anger and emotion. In a low voice he cursed
his father:
"Beast! That's what you are! A beast ... a gross creature ... a brute! Yes,
a brute!... and I hate you, I hate you!... Oh, I wish you were dead! I wish
you were dead!"
His bosom swelled. He looked desperately at the sticky staircase and the
spider's web swinging in the wind above the broken pane. He felt alone,
lost in his misery. He looked at the gap in the banisters.... What if he
were to throw himself down?... or out of the window?... Yes, what if he
were to kill himself to punish them? How remorseful they would be! He heard
the noise of his fall from the stairs. The door upstairs opened suddenly.
Agonized voices cried: "He has fallen!--He has fallen!" Footsteps clattered
downstairs. His father and mother threw themselves weeping upon his body.
His mother sobbed: "It is your fault! You have killed him!" His father
waved his arms, threw himself on his knees, beat his head against the
banisters, and cried: "What a wretch am I! What a wretch am I!" The sight
of all this softened his misery. He was on the point of taking pity on
their grief; but then he thought that it was well for them, Had he enjoyed
his revenge....
When his story was ended, he found himself once more at the top of the
stairs in the dark; he looked down once more, and his desire to throw
himself down was gone. He even, shuddered a little, and moved away from the
edge, thinking that he might fall. Then he felt that he was a prisoner,
like a poor bird in a cage--a prisoner forever, with nothing to do but to
break his head and hurt himself. He wept, wept, and he robbed his eyes with
his dirty little hands, so that in a moment he was filthy. As he wept he
never left off looking at the things about him, and he found some
distraction in that. He stopped moaning for a moment to look at the spider
which, had just begun to move. Then he began with less conviction. He
listened to the sound of his own weeping, and went on, mechanically with
his sobbing, without much knowing why he did so. Soon he got up; he was
attracted by the window. He sat on the window-sill, retiring into the
background, and watched the spider furtively. It interested while it
revolted him.
Below the Rhine flowed, washing the walls of the house. In the staircase
window it was like being suspended over the river in a moving sky.
Jean-Christophe never limped down the stairs without taking a long look at
it, but he had never yet seen it as it was to-day. Grief sharpens the
senses; it is as though everything were more sharply graven on the vision
after tears have washed away the dim traces of memory. The river was like
a living thing to the child--a creature inexplicable, but how much more
powerful than all the creatures that he knew! Jean-Christophe leaned
forward to see it better; he pressed his mouth and flattened his nose
against the pane. Where was _it_ going? What did _it_ want? _It_ looked
free, and sure of its road.... Nothing could stop _it_. At all hours of the
day or night, rain or sun, whether there were joy or sorrow in the house,
_it_ went on going by, and it was as though nothing mattered to _it_, as
though _it_ never knew sorrow, and rejoiced in its strength. What joy to
be like _it_, to run through the fields, and by willow-branches, and over
little shining pebbles and crisping sand, and to care for nothing, to be
cramped by nothing, to be free!...
The boy looked and listened greedily; it was as though he were borne
along by the river, moving by with it.... When he closed his eyes he
saw color--blue, green, yellow, red, and great chasing shadows and
sunbeams.... What he sees takes shape. Now it is a large plain, reeds, corn
waving under a breeze scented with new grass and mint. Flowers on every
side--cornflowers, poppies, violets. How lovely it is! How sweet the air!
How good it is to lie down in the thick, soft grass!... Jean-Christophe
feels glad and a little bewildered, as he does when on feast-days his
father pours into his glass a little Rhine wine.... The river goes by....
The country is changed.... Now there are trees leaning over the water;
their delicate leaves, like little hands, dip, move, and turn about in
the water. A village among the trees is mirrored in the river. There are
cypress-trees, and the crosses of the cemetery showing above the white wall
washed by the stream. Then there are rocks, a mountain gorge, vines on the
slopes, a little pine-wood, and ruined castles.... And once more the plain,
corn, birds, and the sun....