“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. His 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, tomorrow.”
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
