The Goose Man
coming, heads ducked, hands scurried across the books, feet stopped
scraping, and all whispering died out.
He gave the impression of a man who hated his job, but in reality he
loved it. He liked the clerks because of their servile docility and
their famished faces. He liked them because they came promptly every
morning and went away every evening tired as tired could be, and because
day after day, year in and year out, they sat there and wrote, wrote,
wrote.
He liked the inspectors because day after day, year in and year out,
they did a great deal of work for a very little money. He liked the
agents and sub-agents who made it possible for the company to issue
hundreds of new policies every day. He liked their dirty clothes and
tattered boots, their hungry looks, their misleading but effective line
of talk, and their sad faces.
The special bait of the workmen's insurance was the small premium,
carrying with it a small policy. In this way the man of small means was
to be educated in thrift. As a rule, however, the small man realised,
when it was too late, that the agent had promised more than the company
could do. He became distrustful; his weekly savings were so scant that
it was impossible for him to pay his premiums regularly; with the
expiration of each week it became increasingly difficult to make up the
back payments, and, before he knew precisely what had happened, his
policy had been declared void, and the money he had paid in on it
confiscated.
In this way the company made millions. It was the pfennigs of the
poorest classes that constituted these millions, made the dividends rise
higher and higher, increased the army of clerks, and filled the pockets
of the agents.
These agents were recruited from the scum of human society. They were
made up of bankrupts, decadent students, gamblers, topers, and beggars.
They came from the ranks of those who had been pursued by misfortune
and who bore the marks of crime. No one was too small or too bad.
Alfons Diruf, however, saw that it would vastly improve the credit of
the company if to this list of outcasts he would add a few eminently
respectable citizens. He consequently went out on his own
responsibility, and looked for help. His quest brought him to Jason
Philip Schimmelweis.
"It's a gold mine," he said; "you work for an ideal, and you get
something out of it for yourself. Ideals, incidentally, that are not
profitable are idiotic." With that he blew the smoke of his Havana cigar
through his nose.
Jason Philip understood. It was not necessary to flatter the leader and
politician that was admittedly in him. He nearly ran his legs off
working for the company. Alfons Diruf loved this socialist bookkeeper,
after a fashion.
Inspector Jordan saw however that the countless brokers were encroaching
on his territory and stirring up distrust on the part of his better
clients. He lost his interest. The directors felt obliged to send Alfons
Diruf a critical memorandum explaining Jordan's case, and showing that
he was no longer as efficient as he used to be.
II
Daniel had grown tired of his room in the attic and the society of
brush-maker Hadebusch. He announced that he was going to move.
Surrounded by a cloud of smells from boiled cabbage, Frau Hadebusch
raged about the ingratitude of man. Her shrieks called Herr Francke and
the Methodist from out their warm holes; the brush-maker and his
imbecile son also appeared in the dimly lighted vestibule; and before
these five Hogarth figures stood the defenceless sinner, Daniel
Nothafft.
He looked about in the suburbs of St. Mary, but found everything too
dear. He went out to New Gate, but everything was taken. He tried the
St. John district, and that pleased him best of all. Late in the
afternoon he came to a house in the Long Row, at the entrance to which
hung a "To Let" sign.
He pulled the bell cord, and a beautiful servant girl took him into a
room. Through the window he could look out on a garden filled with old
trees. A spinster came in, and smiled at the pleasure he took in the
room and the view.
"I must see my sister," she said, as he asked her about the price.
She called out into the hall, and her sister, likewise an elderly and
kindly spinster, came in. They held a council, the deliberations of
which were conducted in muffled tones, and then agreed that they would
have to consult Albertina. She was the third sister. The first tip-toed
to the door and, with pointed lips, called the name, Albertina, out into
the long hall with as much coyness as had been employed in summoning the
second sister.
Albertina was the youngest of the three; she was about forty. But she
had forgotten, like Jasmina and Saloma, to erase twenty years from the
calendar: all three had preserved the youthful charm of their girlhood.
Albertina blushed as she looked at the young man, and her modesty was
contagious; the two sisters also blushed. She told Daniel that they were
the Ruediger sisters. With that she remained silent, and looked down as
though she had divulged her entire fate. She informed Daniel that they
had decided to rent the room to some dependable young man, because there
had been considerable petty thieving in the neighbourhood of late and
they would like to enjoy the protection of a man, for they were entirely
alone, except for the boy who tended the garden. They told him also that
they had had several offers, but that they had declined them because
they did not like the appearance of the applicants. In affairs of this
kind, indeed in everything, the three sisters were always of like mind.
Fraeulein Saloma asked Daniel what he did. He replied that he was a
musician. A chorus of surprise greeted his ears, rendered in perfect
time by the three female voices. Fraeulein Jasmina asked him whether he
was a singer or a violinist. He replied that he was neither, that he was
a composer, or that he at least hoped to become one. With that an
expression of intense spirituality spread over the faces of the sisters,
so that they looked like triplets. Aha, a creative artist! "Y-e-s," said
Daniel, "if you wish to put it that way: a creative artist."
They hopped into the corner like so many sparrows, and went into serious
conference. Fraeulein Saloma, as chairman, wanted to know whether a
monthly rent of twelve marks would be too much. No, replied Daniel, that
would not be excessive. He said it without giving the matter the
slightest consideration, and then shook hands with the sisters. Fraeulein
Jasmina added that he could use the piano on the first floor whenever he
wished to, and that it merely needed tuning. Daniel shook her hand
again, this time with special warmth. His joy had awakened in him a
measure of clumsy familiarity.
Before he left the house he went out into the garden, and stood for a
while under one of the trees. A tree to myself at last, he thought. Up
in the top a blackbird was singing. Meta the servant looked out from the
door where she was standing, astonished at it all.
Fraeulein Albertina said to her sisters: "He seems like an interesting
young man, but he has bad manners."
"Artists attach no importance to externalities," replied Fraeulein
Jasmina with knitted brow.
"A great mistake. He always looked as if he had just come out of a
bandbox. You remember, don't you?"
The other two nodded. The three then walked down the garden path, arm in
arm.
III
Daniel was standing in the vegetable market before the Goose Man
Fountain, eating apples.
The sun was shining, and he noticed that the shadow of the fountain was
moving slowly toward the church. It made him sad to see that time was
passing and how it was passing. When he turned around, however, and saw
that the bronze figure of the man with the two geese under his arms was
not merely indifferent to the passing of time but confident that all is
well, he could not help but laugh.
What made him laugh was partly the calm of the man: he was always
waiting for something, and he was always there. He was likewise amused
at the thought that two geese could make a man look so contented.
IV
As Daniel was going home one afternoon from a piano lesson, he met
Eleanore Jordan. He told her about his new room and the three bizarre
creatures in the house in the Long Row.
Eleanore had heard all about them. She said they were the daughters of
the geometrician Ruediger, and that he had left the town some time ago
because of a quarrel with the citizens, or rather with one of the gilds.
The origin of the trouble was the picture of a certain painter. More she
did not know, other than that Ruediger had gone to Switzerland and lost
his life by falling down one of the mountains. The sisters, she said,
were the laughing stock of the town. They never left the house except on
certain days, when they went out to the nearby cemetery at the Church of
St. John to place flowers on the grave of that painter.
Daniel hardly listened to what she said. They were standing at the St.
Sebaldus Church, and the chimes began to play. "Magnificent," he
murmured, "an ascending triad in A."
Eleanore asked him how he was getting along, and looked with regret at
his sunken cheeks. Her virile expression was rather displeasing to him.
He was surprised to see how rarely she lowered her eye lids. He said he
was getting along quite well. She smiled.
"It's terrible that a man has to have a monster in his body that must be
fed," he remarked. "Otherwise one could storm the heavens and steal the
songs of the angels. But this was not to be. You have first to flutter
your wings until they are wounded and break your chains, and by that
time such ethereal power as you may have had is dissipated."
He wrinkled his face until he again looked like the wily ape. "But I am
going to see it through," he said. "I want to find out whether God drew
me from the urn as a blank or a prize." He could be very eloquent when
he talked about himself.
Eleanore smiled. It seemed to her that it was merely necessary to bring
a little order into his life. She consequently assumed the
responsibility of looking after his room.
In Tetzel Street they met the inspector. As Jordan walked along at the
side of his beloved daughter, it seemed to him that the grey walls and
weather-beaten stones of the houses were no longer so earthy or weighed
down with time. Eleanore looked toward the West into the purple glow of
the setting sun. She was not quite herself. There came moments when she
suffered from homesickness for a fairer land.
She thought of Italy. She conjured up lovely visions of sunny bays,
blooming groves, and white statues.
Daniel however went on toward the Fuell. The workmen were coming from the
suburbs, and in their tired faces he felt that he recognised his own
world. "Oh," he sighed, "I should like to get nearer the stars, to make
the acquaintance of more dependable hearts, of hearts that are truer
even than my own."
Just then he looked up at Benda's window, and saw his light. He was
ashamed of himself.
V
The first time Eleanore visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She
heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel's
voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to
each other like hens on a roost.
It was the Ruediger sisters trying to drink in the creative efforts of
the artist. That they were eavesdropping at the fount of art they
understood both in the good and the bad sense: their enthusiasm was
praiseworthy, their courtesy was deficient. When they caught sight of
Eleanore on the stairway, they were terrified, and rustled into the
adjoining room.