find Christophe on the barricade. He was not very courageous, he started
every time he heard a shot: and he counted the cobble-stones over which
he stepped--(odd or even), to make out his chances of being killed. He
did not stop, but went through with it. When he reached the barricade he
found Christophe, perched on a wheel of the overturned omnibus, amusing
himself by firing pistol-shots into the air. Round the barricade the
riff-raff of Paris, spewed up from the gutters, had swollen up like the
dirty water from a sewer after heavy rain. The original combatants were
drowned by it. Manousse shouted to Christophe, whose back was turned to
him. Christophe did not hear him. Manousse climbed up to him and plucked
at his sleeve. Christophe pushed him away and almost knocked him down.
Manousse stuck to it, climbed up again, and shouted:
"Jeannin...."
In the uproar the rest of the sentence was lost. Christophe stopped
short, dropped his revolver, and, slipping down from his scaffolding, he
rejoined Manousse, who started pulling him away.
"You must clear out," said Manousse.
"Where is Olivier?"
"You must clear out," repeated Manousse.
"Why?" said Christophe.
"The barricade will be captured in an hour. You will be arrested
to-night."
"What have I done?"
"Look at your hands.... Come!... There's no room for doubt, they won't
spare you. Everybody recognized you. You've not got a moment to lose."
"Where is Olivier?"
"At home."
"I'll go and join him."
"You can't do that. The police are waiting for you at the door. He sent
me to warn you. You must cut and run."
"Where do you want me to go?"
"To Switzerland. Canet will take you out of this in his car."
"And Olivier?"
"There's no time to talk...."
"I won't go without seeing him."
"You'll see him there. He'll join you to-morrow. He'll go by the first
train. Quick! I'll explain."
He caught hold of Christophe. Christophe was dazed by the noise and the
wave of madness that had rushed through him, could not understand what
he had done and what he was being asked to do, and let himself be
dragged away. Manousse took his arm, and with his other hand caught hold
of Canet, who was not at all pleased with the part allotted to him in
the affair: and he packed the two of them into the car. The worthy Canet
would have been bitterly sorry if Christophe had been caught, but he
would have much preferred some one else to help him to escape. Manousse
knew his man. And as he had some qualms about Canet's cowardice, he
changed his mind just as he was leaving them and the car was getting
into its stride and climbed up and sat with them.
Olivier did not recover consciousness. Amélie and the little hunchback
were left alone in the room. Such a sad room it was, airless and gloomy!
It was almost dark.... For one instant Olivier emerged from the abyss.
He felt Emmanuel's tears and kisses on his hand. He smiled faintly, and
painfully laid his hand on the boy's head. Such a heavy hand it was!...
Then he sank back once more....
By the dying man's head, on the pillow, Amélie had laid a First of May
nosegay, a few sprays of lily-of-the-valley. A leaky tap in the
courtyard dripped, dripped into a bucket. For a second mental images
hovered tremblingly at the back of his mind, like a light flickering and
dying down ... a house in the country with glycine on the walls: a
garden where a child was playing: a boy lying on the turf: a little
fountain plashing in its stone basin: a little girl laughing....
II
They drove out of Paris. They crossed the vast plains of France shrouded
in mist. It was an evening like that on which Christophe had arrived in
Paris ten years before. He was a fugitive then, as now. But then his
friend, the man who loved him, was alive: and Christophe was fleeing
towards him....
During the first hour Christophe was still under the excitement of the
fight: he talked volubly in a loud voice: in a breathless, jerky fashion
he kept on telling what he had seen and heard: he was proud of his
achievement and felt no remorse. Manousse and Canet talked too, by way
of making him forget. Gradually his feverish excitement subsided, and
Christophe stopped talking: his two companions went on making
conversation alone. He was a little bewildered by the afternoon's
adventures, but in no way abashed. He recollected the time when he had
come to France, a fugitive then, always a fugitive. It made him laugh.
No doubt he was fated to be so. It gave him no pain to be leaving Paris:
the world is wide: men are the same everywhere. It mattered little to
him where he might be so long as he was with his friend. He was counting
on seeing him again next day. They had promised him that.
They reached Laroche. Manousse and Canet did not leave him until they
had seen him into the train. Christophe made them say over the name of
the place where he was to get out, and the name of the hotel, and the
post-office where he would find his letters. In spite of themselves, as
they left him, they both looked utterly dejected. Christophe wrung their
hands gaily.
"Come!" he shouted, "don't look so like a funeral Good Lord, we shall
meet again! Nothing easier! We'll write to each other to-morrow."
The train started. They watched it disappear.
"Poor devil!" said Manousse.
They got back into the car. They were silent. After a short time Canet
said to Manousse:
"Bah! the dead are dead. We must help the living."
As night fell Christophe's excitement subsided altogether. He sat
huddled in a corner of the carriage, and pondered. He was sobered and
icy cold. He looked down at his hands and saw blood on them that was not
his own. He gave a shiver of disgust. The scene of the murder came
before him once more. He remembered that he had killed a man: and now he
knew not why. He began to go over the whole battle from the very
beginning; but now he saw it in a very different light. He could not
understand how he had got mixed up in it. He went back over every
incident of the day from the moment when he had left the house with
Olivier: he saw the two of them walking through Paris until the moment
when he had been caught up by the whirlwind. There he lost the thread:
the chain of his thoughts was snapped: how could he have shouted and
struck out and moved with those men with whose beliefs he disagreed? It
was not he, it was not he!... It was a total eclipse of his will!... He
was dazed by it and ashamed. He was not his own master then? Who was his
master?... He was being carried by the express through the night: and
the inward night through which he was being carried was no less dark,
nor was the unknown force less swift and dizzy.... He tried hard to
shake off his unease: but one anxiety was followed by another. The
nearer he came to his destination, the more he thought of Olivier; and
he was oppressed by an unreasoning fear.
As he arrived he looked through the window across the platform for the
familiar face of his friend.... There was no one. He got out and still
went on looking about him. Once or twice he thought he saw.... No, it
was not "he." He went to the appointed hotel. Olivier was not there.
There was no reason for Christophe to be surprised: how could Olivier
have preceded him?... But from that moment on he was in an agony of
suspense.
It was morning. Christophe went up to his room. Then he came down again,
had breakfast, sauntered through the streets. He pretended to be free of
anxiety and looked at the lake and the shop-windows, chaffed the girl in
the restaurant, and turned over the illustrated papers.... Nothing
interested him. The day dragged through, slowly and heavily. About seven
o'clock in the evening, Christophe having, for want of anything else to
do, dined early and eaten nothing, went up to his room, and asked that
as soon as the friend he was expecting arrived, he should be brought up
to him. He sat down at the desk with his back turned to the door. He had
nothing to busy himself with, no baggage, no books: only a paper that he
had just bought: he forced himself to read it: but his mind was
wandering: he was listening for footsteps in the corridor. All his
nerves were on edge with the exhaustion of a day's anxious waiting and a
sleepless night.
Suddenly he heard some one open the door. Some indefinable feeling made
him not turn around at once. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Then he
turned and saw Olivier smiling at him. He was not surprised, and said:
"Ah, here you are at last!"
The illusion vanished.
Christophe got up suddenly, knocking over chair and table. His hair
stood on end. He stood still for a moment, livid, with his teeth
chattering.
At the end of that moment--(in vain did he shut his eyes to it and tell
himself: "I know nothing")--he knew everything: he was sure of what he
was going to hear.
He could not stay in his room. He went down into the street and walked
about for an hour. When he returned the porter met him in the hall of
the hotel and gave him a letter. _The_ letter. He was quite sure it
would be there. His hand trembled as he took it. He opened it, saw that
Olivier was dead, and fainted.
The letter was from Manousse. It said that in concealing the disaster
from him the day before, and hurrying him off, they had only been
obeying Olivier's wishes, who had desired to insure his friend's
escape,--that it was useless for Christophe to stay, as it would mean
the end of him also,--that it was his duty to seek safety for the sake
of his friend's memory, and for his other friends, and for the sake of
his own fame, etc., etc.... Amélie had added three lines in her big,
scrawling handwriting, to say that she would take every care of the poor
little gentleman....
When Christophe came back to himself he was furiously angry. He wanted
to kill Manousse. He ran to the station. The hall of the hotel was
empty, the streets were deserted: in the darkness the few belated
passers-by did not notice his wildly staring eyes or his furious
breathing. His mind had fastened as firmly as a bulldog with its fangs
on to the one fixed idea: "Kill Manousse! Kill!..." He wanted to return
to Paris. The night express had gone an hour before. He had to wait
until the next morning. He could not wait. He took the first train that
went in the direction of Paris, a train which stopped at every station.
When he was left alone in the carriage Christophe cried over and over
again:
"It is not true! It is not true!"
At the second station across the French frontier the train stopped
altogether: it did not go any farther. Shaking with fury, Christophe got
out and asked for another train, battering the sleepy officials with
questions, and only knocking up against indifference. Whatever he did he
would arrive too late. Too late for Olivier. He could not even manage to
catch Manousse. He would be arrested first. What was he to do? Which way
to turn? To go on? To go back? What was the use? What was the use?... He
thought of giving himself up to a gendarme who went past him. He was
held back by an obscure instinct for life which bade him return to
Switzerland. There was no train in either direction for a few hours.
Christophe sat down in the waiting-room, could not keep still, left the
station, and blindly followed the road on through the night. He found
himself in the middle of a bare countryside--fields, broken here and
there with clumps of pines, the vanguard of a forest. He plunged into
it. He had hardly gone more than a few steps when he flung himself down
on the ground and cried:
"Olivier!"
He lay across the path and sobbed.
A long time afterwards a train whistling in the distance roused him and
made him get up. He tried to go back to the station, but took the wrong
road. He walked on all through the night. What did it matter to him
where he went? He went on walking to keep from thinking, walking,
walking, until he could not think, walking on in the hope that he might
fall dead. Ah! if only he might die!...
At dawn he found himself in a French village a long way from the
frontier. All night he had been walking away from it. He went into an
inn, ate a huge meal, set out once more, and walked on and on. During
the day he sank down in the middle of a field and lay there asleep until
the evening. When he woke up it was to face another night. His fury had
abated. He was left only with frightful grief that choked him. He
dragged himself to a farmhouse, and asked for a piece of bread and a
truss of straw for a bed. The farmer stared hard at him, cut him a slice
of bread, led him into the stable, and locked it. Christophe lay in the
straw near the thickly-smelling cows, and devoured his bread. Tears were
streaming down his face. Neither his hunger nor his sorrow could be
appeased. During the night sleep once more delivered him from his agony
for a few hours. He woke up next day on the sound of the door opening.
He lay still and did not move. He did not want to come back to life. The
farmer stopped and looked down at him for a long time: he was holding in
his hand a paper, at which he glanced from time to time. At last he
moved forward and thrust his newspaper in front of Christophe. His
portrait was on the front page.
"It is I," said Christophe. "You'd better give me up."
"Get up," said the farmer.
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 passed.
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 passage, 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 bumped 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, bumpy, 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
God! 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 succumbed 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 accumulated 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 knob, 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 passed. 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.