"How good it is to think, at the end of life, that I have never been alone even in my greatest loneliness!… Souls that I have met on the way, brothers, who for a moment have held out their hands to me, mysterious spirits sprung from my mind, living and dead—all living.—O all that I have loved, all that I have created! Ye surround me with your warm embrace, ye watch over me. I hear the music of your voices. Blessed be destiny, that has given you to me! I am rich, I am rich…. My heart is full!…"
He looked out through the window…. It was one of those beautiful sunless days, which, as old Balzac said, are like a beautiful blind woman…. Christophe was passionately absorbed in gazing at the branch of a tree that grew in front of the window. The branch was swelling, the moist buds were bursting, the little white flowers were expanding; and in the flowers, in the leaves, in the whole tree coming to new life, there was such an ecstasy of surrender to the new-born force of spring, that Christophe was no longer conscious of his weariness, his depression, his wretched, dying body, and lived again in the branch of the tree. He was steeped in the gentle radiance of its life. It was like a kiss. His heart, big with love, turned to the beautiful tree, smiling there upon his last moments. He thought that at that moment there were creatures loving each other, that to others this hour, that was so full of agony for him, was an hour of ecstasy, that it is ever thus, and that the puissant joy of living never runs dry. And in a choking voice that would not obey his thoughts—(possibly no sound at all came from his lips, but he knew it not)—he chanted a hymn to life.
An invisible orchestra answered him. Christophe said within himself:
"How can they know? We did not rehearse it. If only they can go on to the end without a mistake!"
He tried to sit up so as to see the whole orchestra, and beat time with his arms outstretched. But the orchestra made no mistake; they were sure of themselves. What marvelous music! How wonderfully they improvised the responses! Christophe was amused.
"Wait a bit, old fellow! I'll catch you out."
And with a tug at the tiller he drove the ship capriciously to left and right through dangerous channels.
"How will you get out of that?… And this? Caught!… And what about this?"
But they always extricated themselves: they countered all his audacities with even bolder ventures.
"What will they do now?… The rascals!…"
Christophe cried "bravo!" and roared with laughter.
"The devil! It is becoming difficult to follow them! Am I to let them beat me?… But, you know, this is not a game! I'm done, now…. No matter! They shan't say that they had the last word…."
But the orchestra exhibited such an overpoweringly novel and abundant fancy that there was nothing to be done but to sit and listen open-mouthed. They took his breath away…. Christophe was filled with pity for himself.
"Idiot!" he said to himself. "You are empty. Hold your peace! The instrument has given all that it can give. Enough of this body! I must have another."
But his body took its revenge. Violent fits of coughing prevented his listening:
"Will you hold your peace?"
He clutched his throat, and thumped his chest, wrestled with himself as with an enemy that he must overthrow. He saw himself again in the middle of a great throng. A crowd of men were shouting all around him. One man gripped him with his arms. They rolled down on the ground. The other man was on top of him. He was choking.
"Let me go. I will hear!… I will hear! Let me go, or I'll kill you!…"
He banged the man's head against the wall, but the man would not let him go.
"Who is it, now? With whom am I wrestling? What is this body that I hold in my grasp, this body warm against me?…"
A crowd of hallucinations. A chaos of passions. Fury, lust, murderous desires, the sting of carnal embraces, the last stirring of the mud at the bottom of the pond….
"Ah! Will not the end come soon? Shall I not pluck you off, you leeches clinging to my body?… Then let my body perish with them!"
Stiffened in shoulders, loins, knees, Christophe thrust back the invisible enemy…. He was free…. Yonder, the music was still playing, farther and farther away. Dripping with sweat, broken in body, Christophe held his arms out towards it:
"Wait for me! Wait for me!"
He ran after it. He stumbled. He jostled and pushed his way…. He had run so fast that he could not breathe. Has heart beat, his blood roared and buzzed in his ears, like a train rumbling through a tunnel….
"God! How horrible!"
He made desperate signs to the orchestra not to go on without him…. At last! He came out of the tunnel!… Silence came again. He could hear once more.
"How lovely it is! How lovely! Encore! Bravely, my boys!… But who wrote it, who wrote it?… What do you say? You tell me that Jean-Christophe Krafft wrote it? Oh! come! Nonsense! I knew him. He couldn't write ten bars of such music as that!… Who is that coughing? Don't make such a noise!… What chord is that?… And that?… Not so fast! Wait!…"
Christophe uttered inarticulate cries; his hand, clutching the quilt, moved as if it were writing: and his exhausted brain went on mechanically trying to discover the elements of the chords and their consequents. He could not succeed: his emotion made him drop his prize. He began all over again…. Ah! This time it was too difficult….
"Stop, stop…. I can no more…."
His will relaxed utterly. Softly Christophe closed his eyes. Tears of happiness trickled down from his closed lids. The little girl who was looking after him, unknown to him, piously wiped them away. He lost all consciousness of what was happening. The orchestra had ceased playing, leaving him on a dizzy harmony, the riddle of which could not be solved. His brain went on saying:
"But what chord is that? How am I to get out of it? I should like to find the way out, before the end…."
Voices were raised now. A passionate voice. Anna's tragic eyes…. But a moment and it was no longer Anna. Eyes now so full of kindness…. "Grazia, is it thou?… Which of you? Which of you? I cannot see you clearly…. Why is the sun so long in coming?"
Then bells rang tranquilly. The sparrows at the window chirped to remind him of the hour when he was wont to give them the breakfast crumbs…. In his dream Christophe saw the little room of his childhood…. The bells. Now it is dawn! The lovely waves of sound fill the light air. They come from far away, from the villages down yonder…. The murmuring of the river rises from behind the house…. Once more Christophe stood gazing down from the staircase window. All his life flowed before his eyes, like the Rhine. All his life, all his lives, Louisa, Gottfried, Olivier, Sabine….
"Mother, lovers, friends…. What are these names?… Love…. Where are you? Where are you, my souls? I know that you are there, and I cannot take you."
"We are with thee. Peace, O beloved!"
"I will not lose you ever more. I have sought you so long!"
"Be not anxious. We shall never leave thee more."
"Alas! The stream is bearing me on."
"The river that bears thee on, bears us with thee."
"Whither are we going?"
"To the place where we shall be united once more."
"Will it be soon?"
"Look." And Christophe, making a supreme effort to raise his head—(God! How heavy it was!)—saw the river overflowing its banks, covering the fields, moving on, august, slow, almost still. And, like a flash of steel, on the edge of the horizon there seemed to be speeding towards him a line of silver streams, quivering in the sunlight. The roar of the ocean…. And his heart sank, and he asked:
"Is it He?"
And the voices of his loved ones replied:
"It is He!"
And his brain dying, said to itself:
"The gates are opened…. That is the chord I was seeking!… But it is not the end! There are new spaces!…—We will go on, to-morrow."
O joy, the joy of seeing self vanish into the sovereign peace of God, whom all his life he had so striven to serve!…
"Lord, art Thou not displeased with Thy servant? I have done so little.
I could do no more…. I have struggled, I have suffered, I have erred,
I have created. Let me draw breath in Thy Father's arms. Some day I
shall be born again for a new fight."
And the murmuring of the river and the roaring of the sea sang with him:
"Thou shalt be born again. Rest. Now all is one heart. The smile of the night and the day entwined. Harmony, the august marriage of love and hate. I will sing the God of the two mighty wings. Hosanna to life! Hosanna to death!
"Christofori faciem die quacunque tueris, Illa nempe die non morte mala morieris."
Saint Christophe has crossed the river. All night long he has marched against the stream. Like a rock his huge-limbed body stands above the water. On his shoulders is the Child, frail and heavy. Saint Christophe leans on a pine-tree that he has plucked up, and it bends. His back also bends. Those who saw him set out vowed that he would never win through, and for a long time their mockery and their laughter followed him. Then the night fell and they grew weary. Now Christophe is too far away for the cries of those standing on the water's brink to reach him. Through the roar of the torrent he hears only the tranquil voice of the Child, clasping a lock of hair on the giant's forehead in his little hand, and crying: "March on."—And with bowed back, and eyes fixed straight in front of him on the dark bank whose towering slopes are beginning to gleam white, he marches on.
Suddenly the Angelus sounds, and the flock of bells suddenly springs into wakefulness. It is the new dawn! Behind the sheer black cliff rises the golden glory of the invisible sun. Almost falling Christophe at last reaches the bank, and he says to the Child:
"Here we are! How heavy thou wert! Child, who art thou?"
And the Child answers:
"I am the day soon to be born."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Jean-Christophe Journey's End, by Romain Rolland