Jean-Christophe in Paris: The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House Part 30

"Now I know the music of your soul."

He held his hands, and stayed for a long time gazing into his face. At last he said:

"How queer it is!... I have seen you before.... I know you so well, and I have known you so long!..."

Olivier's lips trembled: he was on the point of speaking. But he said nothing.

Christophe went on gazing at him for a moment or two longer. Then he smiled and said no more, and went away.

He went down the stairs with his heart filled with joy. He pa.s.sed two ugly children going up, one with bread, the other with a bottle of oil. He pinched their cheeks jovially. He smiled at the scowling porter. When he reached the street he walked along humming to himself until he came to the Luxembourg. He lay down on a seat in the shade, and closed his eyes. The air was still and heavy: there were only a few pa.s.sers-by. Very faintly he could hear the irregular trickling of the fountain, and every now and then the scrunching of the gravel as footsteps pa.s.sed him by. Christophe was overcome with drowsiness, and he lay basking like a lizard in the sun: his face had been out of the shadow of the trees for some time: but he could not bring himself to stir. His thoughts wound about and about: he made no attempt to hold and fix them: they were all steeped in the light of happiness. The Luxembourg clock struck: he did not listen to it: but, a moment later, he thought it must have been striking twelve. He jumped up to realize that he had been lounging for a couple of hours, had missed an appointment with Hecht, and wasted the whole morning. He laughed, and went home whistling. He composed a _Rondo_ in canon on the cry of a peddler.

Even sad melodies now took on the charm of the gladness that was in him. As he pa.s.sed the laundry in his street, as usual, he glanced into the shop, and saw the little red-haired girl, with her dull complexion flushed with the heat, and she was ironing with her thin arms bare to the shoulder and her bodice open at the neck: and, as usual, she ogled him brazenly: for the first time he was not irritated by her eyes meeting his. He laughed once more. When he reached his room he was free of all the obsessions from which he had suffered. He flung his hat, coat, and vest in different directions, and sat down to work with an all-conquering zest. He gathered together all his scattered sc.r.a.ps of music, which were lying all over the room, but his mind was not in his work: he only read the script with his eyes: and a few minutes later he fell back into the happy somnolence that had been upon him in the Luxembourg Gardens; his head buzzed, and he could not think. Twice or thrice he became aware of his condition, and tried to shake it off: but in vain. He swore light-heartedly, got up, and dipped his head in a basin of cold water. That sobered him a little. He sat down at the table again, sat in silence, and smiled dreamily. He was wondering:

"What is the difference between that and love?"

Instinctively he had begun to think in whispers, as though he were ashamed.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There are not two ways of loving.... Or, rather, yes, there are two ways: there is the way of those who love with every fiber of their being, and the way of those who only give to love a part of their superfluous energy. G.o.d keep me from such cowardice of heart!"

He stopped in his thought, from a sort of shame and dread of following it any farther. He sat for a long time smiling at his inward dreams. His heart sang through the silence:

_Du bist mein, und nun ist das Meine Meiner als jemals..._ ("Thou art mine, and now I am mine, more mine than I have ever been....")

He took a sheet of paper, and with tranquil ease wrote down the song that was in his heart.

They decided to take rooms together. Christophe wanted to take possession at once without worrying about the waste of half a quarter. Olivier was more prudent, though not less ardent in their friends.h.i.+p, and thought it better to wait until their respective tenancies had expired. Christophe could not understand such parsimony. Like many people who have no money, he never worried about losing it. He imagined that Olivier was even worse off than himself. One day when his friend's poverty had been brought home to him he left him suddenly and returned a few hours later in triumph with a few francs which he had squeezed in advance out of Hecht. Olivier blushed and refused. Christophe was put out and made to throw them to an Italian who was playing in the yard. Olivier withheld him. Christophe went away, apparently offended, but really furious with his own clumsiness to which he attributed Olivier's refusal. A letter from his friend brought balm to his wounds. Olivier could write what he could not express by word of mouth: he could tell of his happiness in knowing him and how touched he was by Christophe's offer of a.s.sistance. Christophe replied with a crazy, wild letter, rather like those which he wrote when he was fifteen to his friend Otto: it was full of _Gemuth_ and blundering jokes: he made puns in French and German, and even translated them into music.

At last they went into their rooms. In the Montparna.s.se quarter, near the _Place Denfert_, on the fifth floor of an old house they had found a flat of three rooms and a kitchen, all very small, and looking on to a tiny garden inclosed by four high walls. From their windows they looked out over the opposite wall, which was lower than the rest, on to one of those large convent gardens which are still to be found in Paris, hidden and unknown.

Not a soul was to be seen in the deserted avenues. The old trees, taller and more leafy than those in the Luxembourg Gardens, trembled in the sunlight: troops of birds sang: in the early dawn the blackbirds fluted, and then there came the riotously rhythmic chorus of the sparrows: and in summer in the evening the rapturous cries of the swifts cleaving the luminous air and skimming through the heavens. And at night, under the moon, like bubbles of air mounting to the surface of a pond, there came up the pearly notes of the toads. Almost they might have forgotten the surrounding presence of Paris but that the old house was perpetually shaken by the heavy vehicles rumbling by, as though the earth beneath were s.h.i.+vering in a fever.

One of the rooms was larger and finer than the rest, and there was a struggle between the friends as to who should not have it. They had to toss for it: and Christophe, who had made the suggestion, contrived not to win with a dexterity of which he found it hard to believe himself capable.

Then for the two of them there began a period of absolute happiness. Their happiness lay not in any one thing, but in all things at once: their every thought, their every act, were steeped in it, and it never left them for a moment.

During this honeymoon of their friends.h.i.+p, the first days of deep and silent rejoicing, known only to him "who in all the universe can call one soul his own" ... _Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund_... they hardly spoke to each other, they dared hardly breathe a word; it was enough for them to feel each other's nearness, to exchange a look, a word in token that their thoughts, after long periods of silence, still ran in the same channel. Without probing or inquiring, without even looking at each other, yet unceasingly they watched each other.

Unconsciously the lover takes for model the soul of the beloved: so great is his desire to give no hurt, to be in all things as the beloved, that with mysterious and sudden intuition he marks the imp...erceptible movements in the depths of his soul. One friend to another is crystal-clear: they exchange ent.i.ties. Their features are a.s.similated. Soul imitates soul,--until that day comes when deep-moving force, the spirit of the race, bursts his bonds and rends asunder the web of love in which he is held captive.

Christophe spoke in low tones, walked softly, tried hard to make no noise in his room, which was next to that of the silent Olivier: he was transfigured by his friends.h.i.+p: he had an expression of happiness, confidence, youth, such as he had never worn before. He adored Olivier.

It would have been easy for the boy to abuse his power if he had not been so timorous in feeling that it was a happiness undeserved: for he thought himself much inferior to Christophe, who in his turn was no less humble.

This mutual humility, the product of their great love for each other, was an added joy. It was a pure delight--even with the consciousness of unworthiness--for each to feel that he filled so great a room in the heart of his friend. Each to other they were tender and filled with grat.i.tude.

Olivier had mixed his books with Christophe's: they made no distinction.

When he spoke of them he did not say "_my_ book," but "_our_ book." He kept back only a few things from the common stock: those which had belonged to his sister or were bound up with her memory. With the quick perception of love Christophe was not slow to notice this: but he did not know the reason of it. He had never dared to ask Olivier about his family: he only knew that Olivier had lost his parents: and to the somewhat proud reserve of his affection, which forbade his prying into his friend's secrets, there was added a fear of calling to life in him the sorrows of the past. Though he might long to do so, yet he was strangely timid and never dared to look closely at the photographs on Olivier's desk, portraits of a lady and a gentleman stiffly posed, and a little girl of twelve with a great spaniel at her feet.

A few months after they had taken up their quarters Olivier caught cold and had to stay in bed. Christophe, who had become quite motherly, nursed him with fond anxiety: and the doctor, who, on examining Olivier, had found a little inflammation at the top of the lungs, told Christophe to smear the invalid's chest with tincture of iodine. As Christophe was gravely acquitting himself of the task he saw a confirmation medal hanging from Olivier's neck. He was familiar enough with Olivier to know that he was even more emanc.i.p.ated in matters of religion than himself. He could not refrain from showing his surprise. Olivier colored and said:

"It is a souvenir. My poor sister Antoinette was wearing it when she died."

Christophe trembled. The name of Antoinette struck him like a flash of lightning.

"Antoinette?" he said.

"My sister," said Olivier.

Christophe repeated:

"Antoinette ... Antoinette Jeannin.... She was your sister?... But," he said, as he looked at the photograph on the desk, "she was quite a child when you lost her?"

Olivier smiled sadly.

"It is a photograph of her as a child," he said. "Alas! I have no other....

She was twenty-five when she left me."

"Ah!" said Christophe, who was greatly moved. "And she was in Germany, was she not?"

Olivier nodded.

Christophe took Olivier's hands in his.

"I knew her," he said.

"Yes, I know," replied Olivier.

And he flung his arms round Christophe's neck.

"Poor girl! Poor girl!" said Christophe over and over again.

They were both in tears.

Christophe remembered then that Olivier was ill. He tried to calm him, and made him keep his arms inside the bed, and tucked the clothes up round his shoulders, and dried his eyes for him, and then sat down by the bedside and looked long at him.

"You see," he said, "that is how I knew you. I recognized you at once, that first evening."

(It were hard to tell whether he was speaking of the present or the absent friend.)

"But," he went on a moment later, "you knew?... Why didn't you tell me?"

And through Olivier's eyes Antoinette replied:

"I could not tell you. You had to see it for yourself."

They said nothing for some time: then, in the silence of the night, Olivier, lying still in bed, in a low voice told Christophe, who held his hand, poor Antoinette's story:--but he did not tell him what he had no right to tell; the secret that she had kept locked,--the secret that perhaps Christophe knew already without needing to be told.