The Goose Man
a prize in the lottery, the publication of a good book, or the
announcement of a legitimate and successful speculation made no
impression on him. At times they even annoyed him. He kept his mind, in
other words, riveted on the evils, sorrows, woes, and tribulations that
come to pass either on this earth or in the starry firmament above, and
that were somehow brought to his attention.
His brain was a storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a
catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny,
assassination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel,
bankruptcy, and the never failing family quarrel.
If he chanced to enrich his collection by the addition of some
especially curious or unheard-of incident, he took out his pocket diary,
noted the date, and then wrote: "In Amberg a preacher had a hemorrhage
while delivering his morning sermon." Or: "In Cochin China a tiger
killed and ate fourteen children, and then, forcing its way into the
bungalow of a settler, bit off the head of a woman as she was sleeping
peacefully by the side of her husband." Or: "In Copenhagen a former
actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the
market place, and recited Lady Macbeth's monologue. Her unconventional
behaviour attracted such a large crowd of passersby that several people
were crushed to death in the excitement."
This done, he would go home, happy as a man can be. To idlers standing
in the doorways or servants looking out the windows he would extend the
greetings of the day, and that with really conspicuous cordiality.
If a fire broke out in the city, he was present. As his eyes peered into
the flames, they seemed intoxicated, obsessed, seized with uncanniness.
He would hum a tune of some sort, look into the anxious faces of those
immediately concerned, busy himself with whatever had been salvaged, and
attempt to force his gratuitous advice on the fire chief.
If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and,
where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He
would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the
funeral discourse. But his lips twitched in a peculiar fashion, as if he
felt that he were understood, and flattered.
And in truth all this did flatter him. The defeat, distress, and death
of other people, the betrayals that take place in any community, the
highhanded injustice of those in power, the oppression of the poor, the
violence that was done to right and righteousness, and the sufferings
which had to be borne by thousands day after day, all this flattered
him; it interested him; it lulled him into a comfortable feeling of
personal security.
But then he sat down at his piano at home, and played an adagio of
Beethoven or an impromptu by Schubert, his eyes with fine frenzy rolling
in the meantime. And when the mighty chorus in a Bach oratorio
resounded, he became pale with ecstasy. At the hearing of a good song
well sung he could shed copious tears.
He idolised music.
He was a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a
tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power,
and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He
was a Nero in our own day.
He was the Nero of our day living in three rooms. He was a lonely
bachelor and a bookworm. He exchanged his views with the corner grocer;
he discussed city ordinances with the night watchman; he was a tyrant
through and through and a hangman at heart; he indulged in
eavesdropping at the shrine of fate, and in this way concocted the most
improbable of combinations and wanton deeds of violence; he was
constantly on the lookout for misfortune, litigation, and shame; he
rejoiced at every failure, and was delighted with oppression, whether
at home or abroad. He hung with unqualified joy on the imagined ruins of
imaginary disaster, and took equal pleasure in the actual debacles of
life as it was lived about him. And alongside of this innate and at
times unexpressed gruesomeness and bloodthirstiness, he was filled with
a torturing passion for music. This was Herr Carovius. Such was his
life.
III
For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she
was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his
breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and
all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of
freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was
consequently unbounded when Andreas Doederlein called one day and
proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr
Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known
Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.
He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to
tell him that she was going to marry Doederlein. "You are a shameless
prostitute," he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Doederlein
the door. The wedding took place.
One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas
Doederlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and
began playing the shepherd's motif from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."
Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed:
"Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I
don't believe in it."
"What do you mean, brother?" asked Andreas Doederlein, his head bowed in
grief.
"What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about
this poisoner of wells?" shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the
enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his
deformity. "Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do
who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about
masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher,
and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the
whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose, this
Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him,
go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage." With this
he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with
asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his
stomach.
Andreas Doederlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips
of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down
upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing
between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my
word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some
one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be
so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so
interesting?"
There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority.
It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was
immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide
and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a
water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as
she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding
her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband,
and dropped her head before them.
Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Doederlein one of hatred? It
was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with
which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky
wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his
neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If
Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with
crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his
door with not a thought of entering it.
When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings,
he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: "Well, my
congratulations. It is good that the Doederleins are not to become
extinct, for so long as one of them is living, _plaisir_ will not have
vanished from the earth."
Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or
around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured
forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to
be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly
calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She
soon stopped playing at home.
Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Doederlein wedding. Herr
Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea.
The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle's
benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up
like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of
course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius
said: "Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little
toad could croak so beautifully."
Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to
attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he
looked into Marguerite's radiant face, a certain disappointment in
life--a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which
delighted him.
IV
About this time Herr Becker died. He was the senior city official, and
had been living in the second story of the apartment for twenty-eight
years. Dr. Benda moved in at once with his mother.
Carovius told all about this at the reserved table in the Crocodile. His
companions were in a position to tell him a great deal more about the
ancestry and past life of the Bendas. They were said to have been very
rich once, to have lost their money in the great panic, and to be living
at present in quite moderate circumstances. Benda's father was said to
have shot himself, and his mother was reported to have taken the boy to
school every morning. Solicitor Korn had been told that, despite his
youth, Dr. Benda had written a number of scientific books on biology,
but that this had not enabled him to reach his desired goal.
"What goal?" the table companions asked in unison.
"Why, he wanted to be made a professor, but people had objected." Why
had they objected? came the question from more than one throat. "Well,
you see it was this way: the man is a Jew, and the authorities are not
going to appoint a Jew to an official position in a university without
raising objections. That is to be taken as a matter of course." That
this was in very truth to be taken as a matter of course was also the
opinion of Herr Carovius, who, however, insisted that Benda didn't
exactly look like a Jew; he looked more like a tolerably fat Dutchman.
He was in truth not quite blond, but he was not dark either, and his
nose was as straight as a rule.
"That is just the point: that's the Jewish trick," remarked the Judge,
and took a mighty draught from his beer glass. "In olden times," he
said, "the Jews all had the yellow spots, aquiline noses, and hair like
bushmen. But to-day no Christian can be certain who is Jew and who is
Gentile." To this the whole table agreed.
Herr Carovius at once began a system of espionage. He studied the faces
of the new tenants, and was particularly careful to note when they went
out and when they came in and with whom they associated. He knew
precisely when they turned the lights out at night and when they opened
the windows in the morning. He could tell exactly how many rugs they