The Goose Man
her and Daniel, and did not appear again that evening. Nor did she
appear the following evening. From that time on she avoided his
presence.
For one remarkable second and no longer, Daniel fixed his eyes on the
shape of Gertrude's legs. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that
she was a woman and he was a man. During this second, one of the rarest
of his life, he perceived the outer surface of her body, but without the
enveloping clothes. He thought of her as a nude figure. It lasted only a
second, but he pictured her to himself as a nude. Everything she had
said and done fell from her like so much clothing.
He had a feeling that his eyes had been opened; that he had really seen
for the first time in his life; and that what he now saw was the body of
the world.
The nude picture followed him. He fought against his disquietude.
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He conjured up the
picture in order to destroy it with coolness and composure; but it would
not be destroyed, nor would it vanish. One day he chanced to meet
Gertrude by the beautiful fountain. He stopped, stood as if petrified,
and forgot to speak to her.
XV
It was a cold, clear day in the middle of December. Eleanore wanted to
go skating after dinner. She was known in the entire city for her skill
on the ice. An irrepressible vivacity and sense of freedom pulsed
through her body. It seemed to her lamentable that she should have to
sit down in the overheated, sticky air of the office among all those
clerks, and write.
She went, nevertheless, to the office, took her place among the clerks,
and wrote as usual. Herr Zittel's eyes shone through the lenses of his
spectacles like two poison flasks. But she did not make much progress;
time dragged; it dragged even more heavily and slowly than Herr Diruf's
feet, as he made his rounds through the room. Eleanore looked up. She
felt as if his gloomy eyes were resting on her. Conscious of having
failed to perform her duty as she might have done, she blushed.
Finally the clock struck six. The other clerks left, making much noise
as they did so. Eleanore waited as usual until they had all gone, for
she did not like to mix with them. Just then Benjamin Dorn came wabbling
in: "The Chief would like to speak to Fraeulein Jordan," he said, and
bent his long neck like a swan. Eleanore was surprised: what on earth
could Herr Diruf want with her? Possibly it had to do with Benno.
Alfons Diruf was sitting at his desk as she entered. He wrote one more
line, and then stared at her. There was something in his expression that
drove the blood from her cheeks. Involuntarily she looked down at
herself and felt her flesh creep.
"You wanted to see me," she said.
"Yes, I wanted to see you," he replied, and made a weary attempt to
smile.
There was another pause. In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one
object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then
at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade.
"Well, sweetheart," said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a
sort of convulsion, "we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the
prophet, we are all right, aren't we? Hunh?"
Eleanore lowered her head. She thought she had misunderstood him: "You
wanted to see me," she said in a loud voice.
Diruf laid his hand, palm down, on the edge of his desk. His solitaire
threw off actual sparks of brilliancy. "I can crush every one of you,"
he said, as he shoved his hand along the edge of the desk toward
Eleanore. "That boy out there, your brother, is an underhanded sharper.
If I want to I can make him turn a somersault, believe me." He shoved
his fat hand a little farther along, as if it were some dangerous engine
and his solitaire a signal lamp. "I can make the whole pack of you dance
whenever I want to. Can't I, sweetheart? _Capito?_ _Comprenez-vous?_"
Eleanore looked into Alfons Diruf's smeary eyes with unspeakable
amazement.
Diruf got up, walked over to her, and put his arms around her shoulders.
"Well, if the boy is a sweet-toothed tom-cat who can easily be led
astray, you are a purring pussy-cat," he said with a tone of terrible
tenderness, and held the girl so tight in his arms that she could not
possibly move. "Now be quiet, sweetheart; be calm, my little bosom;
don't worry, you little devil!"
Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable
dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than
anything she had ever even dreamed of. One jerk as though it were a
matter of life and death, and she was free. White as a sheet, she
nevertheless stood there before him, and smiled. It was a rare smile,
something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile.
Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble;
he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while
and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid.
Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she
was in the Long Row. She turned around. Benda, then on the way over to
call on Daniel, caught sight of her, recognised her by the light of the
gas lamp, stopped as she passed by him, and looked after her not a
little concerned.
When she reached home, she sank down on the sofa exhausted. To rid her
mind of the memory of the past hour, she took refuge in her longing,
longing for a southern country. Her longing was so intense, her desire
to go south so fervent, that her face shone as if in fever. But the
glass case had at last been broken.
The bell rang shortly before eight; she said to Gertrude: "If it is
Daniel, send him away. I cannot see any one this evening."
"Are you ill?" asked Gertrude with characteristic sternness.
"I don't know; I simply do not want to see anybody," said Eleanore, and
smiled again as she had smiled in Diruf's office.
It was Daniel, to be sure. Benda had told him that he had seen Eleanore
out in front of the house; and when he learned that she had not been to
call on Daniel, his anxiety increased. "There is something wrong here,"
he said, "you had better go see her." After they had talked the
situation over for a while Benda accompanied Daniel as far as AEgydius
Place, in order to make sure that he inquired after Eleanore.
Gertrude opened the iron door. "Eleanore does not want you to come in,"
she said, with a trace of joy in her eyes.
"Why not? What has happened?"
"She does not wish to see you," said the monosyllabic Gertrude, and
gazed into the light of the hall lamp.
"Is she ill?"
"No!"
"Then she has got to tell me herself that she does not wish to see me."
"Go!" commanded Gertrude and tossed her head back.
Her gloomy eyes hung on his, and the two stood there for a moment
opposite each other, like two racers who have come in at the same goal
at the same time but from opposite directions. Daniel then turned
around, and went down the steps in silence. Gertrude remained standing
for a time, her head sinking deeper and deeper all the while on her
breast. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; a cold shudder ran
through her body.
XVI
Before going to bed, Eleanore wrote a letter to Herr Zittel informing
him that she was leaving the Prudentia at once.
Lying in bed, she could not sleep. She saw herself on the ice cutting
bold and novel figures. The spectators, grouped about her in a wide
circle, admired her skill. She saw the sea with fishing smacks and
coloured sails. She saw gardens full of roses.
Her father and Benno had come home long ago. She heard the bell up in
the nearby church tower strike twelve--and then one--and then two.
She heard some one walking back and forth in the house; she heard some
one opening and closing a door. Then the steps died away, and all was
quiet. She got up, went to the door, and listened. A deep sigh reached
her ear from the next room. She opened the door just a little, without
making the slightest noise, and peeped out through the crack.
Gertrude was standing by the open window; she was in her night-gown and
bare feet. The moon was shining on the square in front of the house; the
glitter of the snow on the roofs made it seem quite cold. The spooky
illumination made the girl's face look spooky. Her loose flowing hair
looked as black as ebony.
Eleanore ran into the room, and closed the window. "What on earth are
you doing, Gertrude?" she exclaimed; "are you getting ready to take your
life?"
Gertrude's slender body shivered in the cold; her toes were all bent in
as if she were having a convulsion. "Yes," she said with marked
moroseness, "that is what I would like to do."
"That's what you would like to do?" replied Eleanore, also trembling
with cold. "And your father? Haven't you the slightest consideration for
him? Do you want to give him more worry than he already has? What is
the matter with you, you crazy girl?"
"I am a sinner, Eleanore," cried Gertrude, fell on her knees, and
clasped Eleanore about the hips. "I am a sinner."
"Yes? A sinner? What sin, pray, have you committed?" asked Eleanore, and
bent down over her.
"Why am I in that house there, in that prison?" cried Gertrude, and
clasped her hands to her breast. "Evil has come over me, evil has taken
possession of me. I have evil thoughts. Look at me, Eleanore, look at
me!"
Her voice had now mounted to the pitch of a piercing shriek. Eleanore
stepped back from her, terror-stricken. Gertrude fell head first on the
floor. Her hair covered her bent and twitching back.
The door leading to Jordan's room opened, and he himself came in
carrying a lighted candle. In default of pajamas, he had thrown a
chequered shawl around his shoulders, the fringes of which were dangling
about his knees. He had a white-peaked night-cap on his head.
Quite beside himself, he looked at the two girls and wanted to say
something; but he was speechless. When much worried he would always
smirk. It was a disagreeable habit. In Eleanore it always aroused a
feeling of intense compassion. "There is nothing wrong, father," she
stammered, and made an awkward gesture which indicated to him that it
would be most agreeable to her if he would go away. "Gertrude has pains
in her stomach; she tried to go to the medicine chest to get a few
drops. Please go, father; I'll put her to bed."
"I will go to the doctor, or I will call Benno and have him go," said
Jordan.
"No, father, it is not necessary. Please go away!"
He appreciated Eleanore's impatience and obediently withdrew, shielding
the light of the candle with his hand; his gigantic shadow followed
along behind him like some unclassified animal.
"Get up, Gertrude, get up and come with me!" said Eleanore.
Gertrude was taken back to her room. After she had been in bed for a few
minutes, there was a knock at the door. It was Jordan; he asked how she
felt. Eleanore told him everything was all right.
Until the moon had disappeared below the church roof, Eleanore sat on
Gertrude's bed, and held her mute hand in her own. Though she had thrown
a cloak about her shoulders, she was cold. Gertrude lay with open,
lifeless eyes. Every movement of Eleanore's face revealed the changing
moods of her soul: she was thinking over an unending series of grave
thoughts. When it became quite dark, Gertrude turned her face to
Eleanore, and said softly: "Please get in bed with me, Eleanore. If I
see you sleeping, possibly I can sleep too."
Eleanore laid the cloak to one side, and slipped in under the covers.
The two girls cuddled up to each other, and in a few minutes both were
sound asleep.
VOICES FROM WITHOUT AND VOICES FROM WITHIN
I