The Goose Man
The three elderly hearts beat impetuously. It was Jasmina's turn to read
from Rueckert's poems. Jasmina had not the shadow of a desire to perform;
her sisters were equally disinclined to listen.
"It is not right," the three kept saying, when they heard of Eleanore's
visits. "It is not right." Even Meta the maid was of the opinion that
her calls were highly unconventional.
As Daniel played on and merely nodded to her, Eleanore's eyes fell on
the mask of Zingarella. She stepped up, took it down from the nail on
the wall, and examined it in perfect silence.
Daniel had in the meantime left the piano. A loud cry from him startled
her: "What the devil are you doing?" he exclaimed in a tone of
immoderate anger. He took the mask, which she was handling so lightly
and tremulously, out of her hands, and replaced it on the nail with
affectionate care.
The sensitive girl at once began to cry. She turned to one side in order
to conceal her tears. Daniel was irritated, but the first thought that
occurred to him was how he could make amends for his rudeness. He
fetched a worn book, and offered to lend it to her. It was a translation
of that beautiful old novel, "Manon Lescaut."
Eleanore came frequently after office hours, but never remained long;
she did not wish to make the people at home uneasy. During the short
time she stayed she always found a number of things to do, such as
straightening up the papers on his table or arranging his scores.
She became acquainted with Benda; he took a liking to her. It did him
good merely to be in her presence, and he could not understand why she
did not have the same wholesome effect on Daniel. Daniel seemed
thoroughly unappreciative of the girl. He was like a man who goes along
the street carrying a basket full of eggs: his sole ambition for the
time being is to see that not a single egg is lost or broken.
The two would frequently accompany the girl home. Daniel always talked
about himself, and Benda listened with a smile. Or Benda talked about
Daniel, and Daniel was all ears.
What did people say? That Eleanore was now trotting around with three
men, whereas she formerly had only one on her string, the Baron, and
that you are going to hear from this affair.
Every now and then a snip of ugly gossip reached Eleanore's ears. She
paid not the slightest attention to it. She looked out from her glass
case on to the world with cool and cheerful indifference, quite
incapable of placing the established interpretation on the glances of
calumniators.
VI
Benda could have sketched Daniel's face in the darkness: the round
forehead, the little nose, pointed and mulish, the rigidly pinched lips,
the angular musician's chin, and the deep dimples in his cheeks.
His ignorance of the musician was complete. Like all scholars, he
nurtured an ingrained distrust when it came to the supernatural
influence of art. For the great musical compositions which, in the
course of time and as a result of the homage of succeeding generations,
had come to be regarded as exemplary and incontestable, he had a feeling
of reverence. For the creations of his contemporaries he had no ear.
That it was hard to understand and appreciate, he knew. That it was
bitter not to be understood or appreciated, he had experienced. That the
discipline associated with all intellectual work demands its tribute in
the form of sacrificial renunciation needed no proof in his case.
The musician was something new to him. How did he regard him? As a blind
man whose soul was on fire. As a drunken man who made the impression of
repulsive sobriety on other men. As an obsessed individual who was
living an excruciatingly lonely life and was unaware of it. As an
unpolished peasant with the nerves of a degenerate.
The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the
musician--a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed
the life of his friend; he allowed the personalities of many young men
whom he had met in life to pass before his mind's eye. He looked for the
criteria of common interests; he sought a law, even here. He sat in the
dusk, and read from the works of the philosopher Mainlaender. Then he
laid the book to one side, and said to himself: "The youth of to-day are
lacerating, devastating themselves.... It is a fearful age. Measure,
proportion, and balance are gone. Every model becomes a caricature. The
individual is absolutely dependent upon himself. The flame is without
container, and threatens to burn the hand that would check it."
In Daniel he had found his brother in fate. Music became his brother in
torture. On seeing his friend lacerated and devastated, he saw twitch
from the eye of Gorgo herself the profoundest of wisdom. But he did not
lay bare his own heart.
One night, after unending conversation had brought them both to
silence--like ships which, tossed about by the winds, at last drift into
the harbour--Benda, taking up with an angry, exasperated remark by
Daniel as it echoed back from the other shore of this silence, said: "We
must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis
than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It
seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that
without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout."
Daniel looked up at once. Benda's big teeth were visible under his bushy
moustache. He had a habit of pulling his lips apart whenever he was
searching for a really incisive word.
Benda continued: "The great majority of what you call talent is
ignominious. Talent is a feather duster. All that comes from the finger
tips is evil. The man who has a distinct goal and is willing to suffer
in order to reach it, that man we can use. And otherwise--how beautiful
it all is after all! Heaven is above us, the earth is beneath us, and in
between stands immortal man."
Daniel got up, and seized Benda's hand. There was nothing more
vanquishing than Benda's handshake. His good strong right became a vise
in which he shook a man's hand until it became limp, a perfectly
delightful benevolence radiating from his eyes in the meanwhile.
The two men exchanged the fraternal "thou."
VII
Eleanore returned the copy of "Manon Lescaut." When Daniel asked her
how she liked it, she never said a word. Since he thought that it was an
excellent book, he began to scold.
She said: "I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about
love."
He gazed into space in order to allow her voice time to die away. There
was a violin tone in her speech, the charm of which he could not escape.
When he fully realised what she had said, he laughed a short laugh, and
remarked that her attitude was one of affected coyness. She shook her
head. Then he teased her about going with young Auffenberg, and asked
her whether real love affairs were just as disagreeable to her as those
related in novels.
The flaming blue of her eyes compelled him to look down. It was not
pleasant for him to admit, by action, that the expression in her face
was stronger than his own. She left, and did not allow herself to be
seen for a few days.
When she returned, he was naive enough to renew his banter. She took her
seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we
really intend to remain friends, Daniel?" she asked.
He cast a side glance of amazement at her, not because he was
particularly struck by her charming suavity and marked winsomeness, but
rather because the violin tone in her throat resounded more strongly and
clearly than ever. But it was quite impossible for him to give an
affirmative reply to her question without puckering up his lips and
putting his hands in his trouser pockets.
She said she had no desire to seem important in his estimation, that she
merely wanted him to regard her as different from other girls. She
insisted that he concede her one privilege if they were to remain
friends: he was not to talk to her about love, either seriously or in
jest. She remarked that for months the very word love had called up
ghost-like recollections. Why this was so, she said she could not tell
him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could
not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what
she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid,
and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story,
however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it
was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her
feelings on this point.
Her face took on a serious expression; it resembled an old picture.
There was something dream-like in her words.
"Well, if that is all you have on your mind, Eleanore, I am sure that
it will be easy for me to respect your wish," said Daniel. There was a
manifest lack of feeling in the kindness he displayed. It seemed indeed
that the secret to which she was attaching so much importance was far
removed from his egotistically encircled world. The little fountain in
the garden was rustling. He listened to see if he could not catch the
dominating tone in the continual splashing.
Eleanore turned to him now with renewed if not novel candour. She was
closer to him in every way--her eyes, her hands, and her words.
VIII
Daniel had just completed an orchestral work which he had entitled
"Vineta." He wished to have Benda hear it. One evening about six Benda
came in. Everything was ready. Daniel sat down at the piano. His face
was pale, his smooth upper lip was trembling.
"Now think of the sea; think of a storm; think of a boat with people in
it. Picture to yourself a wonderful _aurora borealis_ and a sunken city
rising from the sea. Imagine a sea that had suddenly become calm, and in
the light a strange phenomenon. Conjure up such a scene before your
mind's eye, or conjure up something totally different, for this is a
false way of getting at the meaning of music. It is plain prostitution
to think anything of the kind. Ice-flat."
He was just about to begin, when some one knocked at the door. Eleanore
entered. She whisked across the room, and took her seat on the sofa.
The piece opened with a quiet rhythmical, mournful movement, which
suddenly changed to a raging presto. The melodic figure was shattered
like a bouquet of flowers in a waterfall almost before it had had time
to take shape and display real composure. The dissipated elements,
scattered to the four corners of the earth, then returned, hesitatingly
and with evident contrition, to be reunited in a single chain. It seemed
that the mad whirlwind had left them richer, purer and more spiritual.
They pealed forth now, one after the other, in a slow-moving
decrescendo, until they constituted a solemn chorus played in moderato,
melting at last into the lovely and serious main theme, which in the
finale streamed away and beyond into infinity, dying out on an
arpeggiated chord.
Where the piano failed to produce the full effect, Daniel helped out
with his crow-like voice. It was the uncanny energy of expression that
prevented his singing from having a comic effect.
Benda's eyes were so strained in the effort to listen intelligently and
appreciatively that they became dazed, glazed. Had he been asked he
could not have said whether the work was a success or a failure. The
feature of the performance that convinced him was the man and the
magnetism that radiated from the man. The work itself he could neither
fathom nor evaluate. It took hold of him nevertheless because of its
inseparable association with the human phenomenon.