The Goose Man
fact that his trousers were too high. He had a feeling of unmitigated
mental nausea, too, when he noticed how Carovius lifted first one foot
and then the other from the floor, and then set it down, heel first. It
was a detestable habit; and indulging in it made an ugly noise.
VI
Benda's absence lasted for hardly a year. His mother had not accompanied
him this time. She was not feeling well, and there was some danger that
she was losing her eyesight.
After his return he took to silent brooding. Though he never said a word
to his mother about the disappointment he had experienced, she knew
precisely what he had gone through, and spared him the humiliation that
would have followed any questions she might have asked.
He was oppressed by the memories the house awakened in him. Forgotten
pictures became living ones. The figure of the murdered woman appeared
in the nighttime on the balcony. Her shadow fell upon him, nestled up to
him in fact, as he sat at his writing-desk.
There were a great many things that still bound him to her whose spirit
had vanished from the earth, though her body remained.
It was impossible for him to forget her gentle look or the coyness of
her hands. He knew her fate; he knew her soul. But he was condemned to
silence. To withdraw from contact with the world and into the deepest of
loneliness had been her lot; it had also been his. At present it was
possible to get only one picture of her, the one her brother had given:
she sat in her cell and combed her yellow hair.
He held no one responsible; he blamed no one. He merely regretted that
men are as they are.
A former university friend of his came in, and tried to get him
interested in collaborating on a great scientific work. He declined. As
soon as his colleague of other days had gone, he visualised to himself
the entire conversation: The man was affable and insistent; and yet
there was in his very being an underground, enigmatic hostility. It was
the hostility he invariably felt whenever he had anything to do, either
of a purely external, business nature or in a social way, with men of
other faith. The least he had to fear was a prejudiced inimicality, as
if the individual in question were on the point of calling out to him:
You stay on that side, I'll stay on this. Keep off the bridge.
He was fully aware of this, but his pride forbade his fighting against
it. He renounced his natural right to life and a living. He declined the
university conceded privilege of co-existence. To go out and actually
win for himself the right to participate in the inevitable contest of
forces, or to secure even this poor privilege by supplication, or to
defend it by argument, or to cajole it into his possession by political
wiles, seemed to him contrary to reason and at odds with common sense.
He would not do it.
He refused to knock at the door which he himself had bolted and
barricaded.
From this self-imposed embarrassment he suffered to an almost
intolerable degree. It was the irrational and fraudulent phase of
matters that made him suffer. Did men act as they did because they were
so strong in their faith? Not at all. Did he believe in those racial
differences which made them believe? Not at all. He felt at home on the
soil that nourished him; he felt under obligations to the weal and woe
of his people; he was bound heart and soul to the best of them, and
realised that he had been spiritually developed by their language,
ideas, and ideals.
Everything else was a lie. They knew that it was a lie too, but out of
his pride they forged a weapon and turned it against him. To deny his
relationship to them, a relationship that had been proved by his
achievements and enthusiasm, was a part of their plan; it was also a
part of their evil designs.
To strike up acquaintances, seek out congenial companions, or take an
active part in social organisations was repulsive to him. He did not
care to be dragged into fruitless and empty community of effort or
social co-operation. Defiant and alone, he explained his case to
himself. Since it merely intensified his agony to compare his lot with
that of others who seemed to be similarly situated, he did not do it. He
avoided in truth all reflections that might have made the world appear
to him as having at least a semblance of justice.
He was consequently filled with a longing which took more definite
shape day by day, and finally developed into a positive and irrevocable
decision.
About this time he made the acquaintance of Daniel, and through him he
came to know other people. He saw at once that there was something
unusual about Daniel; that there was something in him which he had never
before noticed in any one. Even his outer distress was a challenge to
greater activity, while his inner agitation never permitted his
associates to rest in idle peace.
It was not easy to be of assistance to him; he rejected all gifts which
he could not repay. He had to be convinced first of his duty and
indebtedness to the friend whom fate had made cross his path. And even
then he stood out for the privilege of being theoretically ungrateful.
Benda and his mother succeeded in getting him a position as a tutor in
some private families. He had to give piano lessons to young boys and
girls. The compensation was not great, but it at least helped him out
for the time being.
After the day's work was done, the evenings and nights bound the two
more and more firmly together.
VII
One evening Daniel entered the house and met Herr Carovius. But he was
so absorbed in thought that he passed by without noticing him. Carovius
looked at him angrily, and walked back to the hall to see where the
young man was going. When he heard him ring the bell on the second
floor, an uneasy expression came over his face. He rubbed his chin with
his left hand.
"The idea of passing by me as though I were a block of wood," murmured
Carovius spitefully. "Just wait, young man, I'll make you pay for that."
Instead of leaving the house as he had wished, Carovius went into his
apartment, lighted a candle, and tripped hastily through three rooms, in
which there were old cabinets and trunks filled with books and music
scores. There was also a piano in one. He then took a key from his
pocket, and unlocked a fourth room, which had closed shades and was in
fact otherwise quite oddly arranged.
He went to a table which reached almost the full length of the room,
picked up a piece of white paper, sat down, and wrote with red ink:
"Daniel Nothafft. Musician. Two months in jail."
He then covered the paper with mucilage, pasted it on a wooden box
which looked like a miniature sentry-house, and nailed a lid on the box,
using tacks that were lying ready for this purpose.
There were at least five dozen such boxes on the long table, the
majority of which had names attached to them and had been nailed up.
The closed room Herr Carovius called his court chamber. What he did in
it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the
collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual
who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was assigned such a
keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time,
determined by a formal sentence, was up.
Nor was this all. In the middle section of the table there were a number
of diminutive sand heaps, about thirty in all, and on each one was a
small wooden cross and on each cross was a name. That was Herr
Carovius's cemetery, and those who were figuratively buried there were,
so far as he was concerned, dead, even though they were still going
about their earthly affairs as lively and cheerful as ever. They were
people whose mundane careers were finished, as he saw it, and under each
of their accounts, reckoned exclusively in sins, he had drawn a heavy
line. They were such people as Richard Wagner and his champions, the
local stationer to whom he had advanced some money years ago and who
entered a plea of bankruptcy a few months later, the authors of bad
books that were widely read, or of books which he loathed without having
read them, as, for instance, those of Zola.
There were still a third noteworthy section of the table, and that was
the so-called Academy. This consisted of a plot of ground, surrounded by
an iron fence, and divided up into twelve or fifteen square fields, each
of which was painted in fresh green. In the middle of each field there
was a wooden peg about two inches high, and to the middle of each peg
there was attached a name-plate. From the tops of some of these pegs
little banners of green cloth fluttered in the breeze.
The fact is, Herr Carovius had a weakness for association with
aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the
aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable
traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of
the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had
known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers,
the Kramer-Kleets, and the Auffenbergs. Whenever he had succeeded in
making the personal acquaintance of the members of any of these
families, he went straightway to the Academy and hoisted the appropriate
flag.
But, despite all his effort, he had never in the course of time been
able to run up more than three flags, and these only for a brief period
and without any marked success. Some one had recognised him on the
street or spoken to him at the concert, and that was all. The Academy
looked, in contradistinction to the jail and the cemetery, quite
deserted. Finally he was able to hoist the Auffenberg banner. Herr
Carovius felt that the Academy had a great future.
VIII
Kropotkin the painter had once upon a time received an order to make a
copy of a Holbein for Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg. He never finished
the picture, owing to lack of ability; but he had become acquainted with
Baron Eberhard, and years later, having met him quite accidentally, took
him to the Paradise, where the infamous brethren were then in the habit
of gathering.
Eberhard's appearance at the Paradise was short-lived; he disappeared in
fact as quickly as he had appeared. But this brief space was sufficient
for Herr Carovius to become intimately acquainted with him.
The first time he sat at the same table with him he was noticeably
excited. His face shone with a mild spiritual glow. His voice was sweet
and gentle, his remarks of an unusually agreeable moderation.
He turned the conversation to a discussion of the superiorities of
birth, and lauded the distinction of the hereditary classes. He said it
was from them only that the people could acquire civic virtue. The
brethren scorned his point of view. Herr Carovius came back at them with
an annihilating jest.
During the rendition of this hallelujah-solo in praise of the nobility,
Eberhard von Auffenberg intrenched himself behind a sullen silence. And
though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter
the young nobleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he
could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the
air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was
stumped at every turn.
One night, however, the two enjoyed each other's company on the way
home. That is, Carovius never left Eberhard's side. Annoyed at the
failure of his former tactics, he thought he would try his luck in
another way: he ridiculed the arrogance of a certain caste which
affected to attach less importance to a man like himself than to some
jackanapes whose handkerchief was adorned with an embroidered crown.