the affection that he had left behind him,--so he returned home. When he
had gone as far as his ticket would take him he got out blithely and took
to the road on foot. He had sixty kilometers to do. He was in no hurry and
dawdled like a school-boy. It was April. The country was not very far on.
The leaves were unfolding like little wrinkled hands at the ends of the
Hack branches; the apple trees were in flower, and along the hedges the
frail eglantine smiled. Above the leafless forest, where a soft greenish
down was beginning to appear, on the summit of a little hill, like a trophy
on the end of a lance, there rose an old Romanic castle. Three black clouds
sailed across the soft blue sky. Shadows chased over the country in spring,
showers passed, then the bright sun shone forth again and the birds sang.
Christophe found that for some time he had been thinking of Uncle
Gottfried. He had not thought of the poor man for a long time, and he
wondered why the memory of him should so obstinately obsess him now; he was
haunted by it as he walked along a path along a canal that reflected the
poplars; and the image of his uncle was so actual that as he turned a great
wall he thought he saw him coming towards him.
The sky grew dark. A heavy downpour of rain and hail fell, and thunder
rumbled in the distance. Christophe was near a village; he could see its
pink walls and red roofs among the clumps of trees. He hurried and took
shelter under the projecting roof of the nearest house. The hail-stones
came lashing down; they rang out on the tiles and fell down into the street
like pieces of lead. The ruts were overflowing. Above the blossoming
orchards a rainbow flung its brilliant garish scarf over the dark blue
clouds.
On the threshold a girl was standing knitting. She asked Christophe to
enter. He accepted the invitation. The room into which he stepped was used
as a kitchen, a dining-room, and a bed-room. At the back a stew-pot hung
over a great fire. A peasant woman who was cleaning vegetables wished
Christophe good-day, and bade him go near the fire to dry himself. The girl
fetched a bottle of wine and gave him to drink. She sat on the other side
of the table and went on knitting, while at the same time she looked after
two children who were playing at testing each other's eyes with those
grasses which are known in the country as "thiefs" or "sweeps." She began
to talk to Christophe. It was only after a moment that he saw that she was
blind. She was not pretty. She was a big girl, with red cheeks, white
teeth, and strong arms, but her features were irregular; she had the
smiling, rather expressionless air of many blind people, and also their
mania for talking of things and people as though they could see them. At
first Christophe was startled and wondered if she were making fun of him
when she said that he looked well and that the country was looking very
pretty. But after looking from the blind girl to the woman who was cleaning
the vegetables, he saw that nobody was surprised and that it was no
joke--(there was nothing to joke about indeed).--The two women asked
Christophe friendly questions as to whither he was going and whence he had
come. The blind girl joined in the conversation with a rather exaggerated
eagerness; she agreed with, or commented on, Christophe's remarks about the
road and the fields. Naturally her observations were often wide of the
mark. She seemed to be trying to pretend that she could see as well as he.
Other members of the family came in: a healthy peasant of thirty and his
young wife. Christophe talked to them all, and watched the clearing sky,
waiting for the moment to set out again. The blind girl hummed an air while
she plied her knitting needles. The air brought back all sorts of old
memories to Christophe.
"What!" he said. "You know that." (Gottfried had taught her it.)
He hummed the following notes. The girl began to laugh. She sang the first
half of the phrases and he finished them. He had just got up to go and look
at the weather and he was walking round the room, mechanically taking stock
of every corner of it, when near the dresser he saw an object which made
him start. It was a long twisted stick, the handle of which was roughly
carved to represent a little bent man bowing. Christophe knew it well, he
had played with it as a child. He pounced on the stick and asked in a
choking voice:
"Where did you get this?... Where did you get it?" The man looked up and
said:
"A friend left it here--an old friend who is dead."
Christophe cried:
"Gottfried?"
They all turned and asked:
"How do you know ...?"
And when Christophe told them that Gottfried was his uncle, they were all
greatly excited. The blind girl got up; her ball of wool rolled across the
room; she stopped her work and took Christophe's hands and said in a great
state of emotion:
"You are his nephew?"
They all talked at once. Christophe asked:
"But how ... how do you come to know him?" The man replied:
"It was here that he died."
They sat down again, and when the excitement had gone down a little, the
mother told, as she went on with her work, that Gottfried used to go to the
house for many years; he always used to stay there on his way to and fro
from his journeys. The last time he came--(it was in last July)--he seemed
very tired, and when he took off his pack it was some time before he could
speak a word, but they did not take any notice of it because they were used
to seeing him like that when he arrived and knew that he was short of
breath. He did not complain either. He never used to complain; he always
used to find some happiness in the most unpleasant things. When he was
doing some exhausting work he used to be glad thinking how good it would be
in bed at night, and when he was ill he used to say how good it would be
when he was not ill any longer....
"And, sir, it is wrong to be always content," added the woman, "for if you
axe not sorry for yourself, nobody will pity you. I always complain...."
Well, nobody had paid any attention to him. They had even chaffed him about
looking so well and Modesta--(that was the blind girl's name)--who had just
relieved him of his pack had asked him if he was never going to be tired of
running like a young man. He smiled in reply, for he could not speak. He
sat on the seat by the door. Everybody went about their work, the men to
the fields, the woman to her cooking. Modesta went near the seat, she stood
leaning against the door with her knitting in her hands and talked to
Gottfried. He did not reply; she did not ask him for any reply and told
him everything that had happened since his last visit. He breathed with
difficulty and she heard him trying hard to speak. Instead of being anxious
about him she said:
"Don't speak. Just rest. You shall talk presently.... How can people tire
themselves out like that!..."
And then he did not talk or even try to talk. She went on with her story
thinking that he was listening. He sighed and said nothing. When the
mother came a little later she found Modesta still talking and Gottfried
motionless on the seat with his head flung back facing the sky; for some
minutes Modesta had been talking to a dead man. She understood then that
the poor man had been trying to say a few words before he died but had not
been able to; then with his sad smile he had accepted that and had closed
his eyes in the peace of the summer evening....
The rain had ceased. The daughter-in-law went to the stables, the son took
his mattock and cleared the little gutter in front of the door which the
mud had obstructed. Modesta had disappeared at the beginning of the story.
Christophe was left alone in the room with the mother, and was silent
and much moved. The old woman, who was rather talkative, could not bear
a prolonged silence; and she began to tell him the whole history of her
acquaintance with Gottfried. It went far back. When she was quite young
Gottfried loved her. He dared not tell her, but it became a joke; she made
fun of him, everybody made fun of him,--(it was; the custom wherever he
went)--Gottfried used to come faithfully every year. It seemed natural
to him that people should make fun of him, natural that she should have
married and been happy with another man. She had been too happy, she had
boasted too much of her happiness; then unhappiness came. Her husband
died suddenly. Then his daughter,--a fine strong girl whom everybody
admired, who was to be married to the son of the richest farmer of the
district,--lost her sight as the result of an accident. One day when she
had climbed to the great pear tree behind the house to pick the fruit the
ladder slipped; as she fell a broken branch struck a blow near the eye.
At first it was thought that she would escape with a scar, but later, she
had had unceasing pains in her forehead; one eye lost its sight, then the
other; and all their remedies had been useless. Of course the marriage was
broken off; her betrothed had vanished without any explanation, and of all
the young men who a month before had actually fought for a dance with her,
not one had the courage--(it is quite comprehensible)--to take a blind girl
to his arms. And so Modesta, who till then had been careless and gay, had
fallen into such despair that she wanted to die. She refused to eat; she
did nothing but weep from morning to evening, and during the night they
used to hear her still moaning in her bed. They did not know what to do,
they could only join her in her despair; and she only wept the more.
At last they lost patience with her moaning; then they scolded her and
she talked of throwing herself into the canal. The minister would come
sometimes; he would talk of the good God, and eternal things, and the merit
she was gaining for the next world by bearing her sorrows, but that did not
console her at all. One day Gottfried came. Modesta had never been very
kind to him. Not that she was naturally unkind, but she was disdainful,
and besides she never thought; she loved to laugh, and there was no malice
in what she said or did to him. When he heard of her misfortune he was as
overwhelmed by it as though he were a member of the family. However he did
not let her see it the first time he saw her. He went and sat by her side,
made no allusion to her accident and began to talk quietly as he had always
done before. He had no word of pity for her; he even seemed not to notice
that she was blind. Only he never talked to her of things she could not
see; he talked to her about what she could hear or notice in her blindness;
and he did it quite simply as though it were a natural thing; it was as
though he too were blind. At first she did not listen and went on weeping.
But next day she listened better and even talked to him a little....
"And," the woman went on, "I do not know what he can have said to her. For
we were hay-making and I was too busy to notice her. But in the evening
when we came in from the fields we found her talking quietly. And after
that she went on getting better. She seemed to forget her affliction. But
every now and then she would think of it again; she would weep alone or try
to talk to Gottfried of sad things; but he seemed not to hear, or he would
not reply in the same tone; he would go on talking gravely or merrily of
things which soothed and interested her. At last he persuaded her to go
out of the house, which she had never left since her accident. He made her
go a few yards round the garden at first, and then for a longer distance
in the fields. And at last she learned to find her way everywhere and to
make out everything as though she could see. She even notices things to
which we never pay any attention, and she is interested in everything,
whereas before she was never interested in much outside herself. That
time Gottfried stayed with us longer than usual. We dared not ask him to
postpone his departure, but he stayed of his own accord until he saw that
she was calmer. And one day--she was out there in the yard,--I heard her
laughing. I cannot tell you what an effect that had on me. Gottfried looked
happy too. He was sitting near me. We looked at each other, and I am not
ashamed to tell you, sir, that I kissed him with all my heart. Then he said
to me:
"'Now I think I can go. I am not needed any more.'
"I tried to keep him. But he said:
"'No. I must go now. I cannot stay any longer.'
"Everybody knew that he was like the Wandering Jew: he could not stay
anywhere; we did not insist. Then he went, but he arranged to come here
more often, and every time it was a great joy for Modesta; she was always
better after his visits. She began to work in the house again; her brother
married; she looks after the children; and now she never complains and
always looks happy. I sometimes wonder if she would be so happy if she had
her two eyes. Yes, indeed, sir, there are days, when I think that it would
be better to be like her and not to see certain ugly people and certain
evil things. The world is growing very ugly, it grows worse every day....
And yet I should be very much afraid of God taking me at my word, and for
my part I would rather go on seeing the world, ugly as it is...."
Modesta came back and the conversation changed. Christophe wished to go
now that the weather was fair again, but they would not let him. He had to
agree to stay to supper and to spend the night with them. Modesta sat near
Christophe and did not leave him all the evening. He would have liked to
talk intimately to the girl whose lot filled him with pity. But she gave
him no opportunity. She would only try to ask him about Gottfried. When
Christophe told her certain things she did not know, she was happy and a
little jealous. She was a little unwilling to talk of Gottfried herself;
it was apparent that she did not tell everything, and when she did tell
everything she was sorry for it at once; her memories were her property,
she did not like sharing them with another; in her affection she was as
eager as a peasant woman in her attachment to her land; it hurt her to
think that anybody could love Gottfried as much as she. It is true that
she refused to believe it; and Christophe, understanding, left her that
satisfaction. As he listened to her he saw that, although she had seen
Gottfried and had even seen him with indulgent eyes, since her blindness
she had made of him an image absolutely different from the reality, and she
had transferred to the phantom of her mind all the hunger for love that was
in her. Nothing had disturbed her illusion. With the bold certainty of the
blind, who calmly invent what they do not know, she said to Christophe:
"You are like him."
He understood that for years she had grown used to living in a house with
closed shutters through which the truth could not enter. And now that
she had learned to see in the darkness that surrounded her, and even to
forget the darkness, perhaps she would have been afraid of a ray of light
filtering through the gloom. With Christophe she recalled a number of
rather silly trivialities in a smiling and disjointed conversation in which
Christophe could not be at his ease. He was irritated by her chatter; he
could not understand how a creature who had suffered so much had not become
more serious in her suffering, and he could not find tolerance for such
futility; every now and then he tried to talk of graver things, but they
found no echo; Modesta could not--or would not--follow him.
They went to bed. It was long before Christophe could sleep. He was
thinking of Gottfried and trying to disengage him from the image of
Modesta's childish memories. He found it difficult and was irritated. His
heart ached at the thought that Gottfried had died there and that his body
had no doubt lain in that very bed. He tried to live through the agony
of his last moments, when he could neither speak nor make the blind girl
understand, and had closed his eyes in death. He longed to have been able
to raise his eyelids and to read the thoughts hidden under them, the
mystery of that soul, which had gone without making itself known, perhaps
even without knowing itself! It never tried to know itself, and all its
wisdom lay in not desiring wisdom, or in not trying to impose its will on
circumstance, but in abandoning itself to the force of circumstance, in
accepting it and loving it. So he assimilated the mysterious essence of
the world without even thinking of it. And if he had done so much good to
the blind girl, to Christophe, and doubtless to many others who would be
forever unknown, it was because, instead of bringing the customary words of
the revolt of man against nature, he brought something of the indifferent
peace of Nature, and reconciled the submissive soul with her. He did good
like the fields, the woods, all Nature with which he was impregnated.
Christophe remembered the evenings he had spent with Gottfried in the
country, his walks as a child, the stories and songs in the night. He
remembered also the last walk he had taken with his uncle, on the hill
above the town, on a cold winter's morning, and the tears came to his eyes
once more. He did not try to sleep, so as to remain with his memories. He
did not wish to lose one moment of that night in the little place, filled
with the soul of Gottfried, to which he had been led as though impelled by
some unknown force. But while he lay listening to the irregular trickling
of the fountain and the shrill cries of the bats, the healthy fatigue of
youth mastered his will, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke the sun was shining: everybody on the farm was already at
work. In the hall he found only the old woman and the children. The young
couple were in the fields, sand Modesta had gone to milk. They looked for
her in vain. She was nowhere to be found. Christophe said he would not wait
for her return. He did not much want to see her, and he said that he was in
a hurry. He set out after telling the old woman to bid the others good-bye
for him.
As he was leaving the village at a turn of the road he the blind girl
sitting on a bank under a hawthorn hedge. She got up as she heard him
coming, approached him smiling, took his hand, and said:
"Come."
They climbed up through meadows to a little shady flowering field filled
with tombstones, which looked down on the village. She led him to a grave
and said:
"He is there."
They both knelt down. Christophe remembered another grave by which he had
knelt with Gottfried, and he thought:
"Soon it will be my turn."
But there was no sadness in his thought. A great peace was ascending from
the earth. Christophe leaned over the grave and said, in a whisper to
Gottfried:
"Enter into me!..."
Modesta was praying, with her hands clasped and her lips moving in silence.
Then she went round the grave on her knees, feeling the ground and the
grass and the flowers with her hands. She seemed to caress them, her quick
fingers seemed to see. They gently plucked the dead stalks of the ivy and
the faded violets. She laid her hand on the curb to get up. Christophe saw
her fingers pass furtively over Gottfried's name, lightly touching each
letter. She said:
"The earth is sweet this morning."
She held out her hand to him. He gave her his. She made him touch the moist
warm earth. He did not loose her hand. Their locked fingers plunged into
the earth. He kissed Modesta. She kissed him, too.
They both rose to their feet. She held out to him a few fresh violets she
had gathered, and put the faded ones into her bosom. They dusted their
knees and left the cemetery without a word. In the fields the larks were
singing. White butterflies danced about their heads. They sat down in a
meadow a few yards away from each other. The smoke of the village was
ascending direct to the sky that was washed by the rain. The still canal
glimmered between the poplars. A gleaming blue mist wrapped the meadows and
woods in its folds.
Modesta broke the silence. She spoke in a whisper of the beauty of the day
as though she could see it. She drank in the air through her half-open
lips; she listened for the sounds of creatures and things. Christophe also
knew the worth of such music. He said what she was thinking and could not
have said. He named certain of the cries and imperceptible tremors that
they could hear in the grass, in the depths of the air. She said:
"Ah! You see that, too?"
He replied that Gottfried had taught him to distinguish them.
"You, too?" she said a little crossly.
He wanted to say to her:
"Do not be jealous."
But he saw the divine light smiling all about them: he looked at her blind
eyes and was filled with pity.
"So," he asked, "it was Gottfried taught you?"
She said "Yes," and that they gave her more delight than ever before....
She did not say before "what." She never mentioned the words "eyes" or
"blind."
They were silent for a moment. Christophe looked at her in pity. She felt
that he was looking at her. He would have liked to tell her how much he
pitied her. He would have liked her to complain, to confide in him. He
asked kindly:
"You have been very unhappy?"
She sat dumb and unyielding. She plucked the blades of grass and munched
them in silence. After a few moments,--(the song of a lark was going
farther and farther from them in the sky),--Christophe told her how he
too had been unhappy, and how Gottfried had helped him. He told her all
his sorrows, his trials, as though he were thinking aloud or talking to
a sister. The blind girl's face lit up as he told his story, which she
followed eagerly. Christophe watched her and saw that she was on the point
of speaking. She made a movement to come near him and hold his hand. He
moved, too--but already she had relapsed into her impassiveness, and when
he had finished, she only replied with a few banal words. Behind her broad
forehead, on which there was not a line, there was the obstinacy of a
peasant, hard as a stone. She said that she must go home to look after her
brothers children. She talked of them with a calm smile.
He asked her:
"You are happy?"
She seemed to be more happy to hear him say the word. She said she was
happy and insisted on the reasons she had for being so: she was trying to
persuade herself and him that it was so. She spoke of the children, and the
house, and all that she had to do....
"Oh! yes," she said, "I am very happy!" Christophe did not reply. She rose
to go. He rose too. They said good-bye gaily and carelessly. Modesta's hand
trembled a little in Christophe's. She said:
"You will have fine weather for your walk to-day." And she told him of
a crossroads where he must not go wrong. It was as though, of the two,
Christophe were the blind one.
They parted. He went down the hill. When he reached the bottom he
turned. She was standing at the summit in the same place. She waved her
handkerchief and made signs to him as though she saw him.
There was something heroic and absurd in her obstinacy in denying her
misfortune, something which touched Christophe and hurt him. He felt how
worthy Modesta was of pity and even of admiration,--and he could not have
lived two days with her. As he went his way between flowering hedges he
thought of dear old Schulz, and his old eyes, bright and tender, before
which so many sorrows had passed which they refused to see, for they would
not see hurtful realities.
"How does he see me, I wonder?" thought Christophe. "I am so different from
his idea of me! To him I am what he wants me to be. Everything is in his
own image, pure and noble like himself. He could not bear life if he saw it
as it is."
And he thought of the girl living in darkness who denied the darkness, and
tried to pretend that what was was not, and that what was not was.
Then he saw the greatness of German idealism, which he had so often loathed
because in vulgar souls it is a source of hypocrisy and stupidity. He saw
the beauty of the faith which Begets a world within the world, different
from the world, like a little island in the ocean.--But he could not bear
such a faith for himself, and refused to take refuge upon such an Island
of the Dead. Life! Truth! He would not be a lying hero. Perhaps that
optimistic lie which a German Emperor tried to make law for all his
people was indeed necessary for weak creatures if they were to live. And
Christophe would have thought it a crime to snatch from such poor wretches
the illusion which upheld them. But for himself he never could have
recourse to such subterfuges. He would rather die than live by illusion.
Was not Art also an illusion? No. It must not be. Truth! Truth! Byes wide
open, let him draw in through every pore the all-puissant breath of life,
see things as they are, squarely face his misfortunes,--and laugh.
* * * * *