The Goose Man
"Well, it is at least advisable that for the time being we avoid each
other's presence."
"Advisable for me, you think. And for the time being? How am I to
interpret that?"
"Well, let us say for five years."
"Why exactly five years? Why not twenty? Why not fifty? It would be all
the same."
"It seems to me that five years is just the right amount of time,
Eberhard."
"Five years! Each year has twelve times thirty, fifty-two times seven
days. Why, the arithmetic of it is enough to make a man lose his mind."
"But it must be five years," said Eleanore gently though firmly. "In
five years I will not have changed. And if I am just the same in five
years from now, why, we'll talk it over again. I must not exclude myself
from the world forever. My father often says: What looks like fate at
Easter is a mere whim by Pentecost. I prefer to wait until Pentecost and
not to forget my friend in the meantime."
She gave him her hand with a smile.
He shook his head: "No, I can't take your hand; another one of those
shudders will run through you if I do. Farewell, Eleanore."
"And you too, Eberhard, farewell!"
Eberhard started down the hill. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and
said: "Just one thing more. That musician--Nothafft is his name, isn't
it?--is engaged to your sister, isn't he?"
"Yes, Gertrude and Daniel will get married some day. But who told you
about it?"
"The musician himself was in a restaurant. The fellows were drinking,
and he was so incautious as to raise his glass, and, somewhat after the
fashion of an intoxicated drum-major, he himself drank to Gertrude's
health. For some time there was talk of his marrying you. It is much
better as it is. I can't stand artists. I can't even have due respect
for them, these indiscreet hotspurs. Good night, Eleanore."
And with that he vanished in the darkness.
IN MEMORY OF A DREAM FIGURE
I
One evening Daniel called on Benda to take leave of him for a long
while.
Just as he was about to enter the front gate, he saw Herr Carovius's dog
standing there showing his teeth. The beast's bloodshot eyes were fixed
on a ten-year old girl who was likewise on the point of entering the
house, but, afraid of the dog, she did not dare take another step. The
animal had dragged his chain along behind him, and stood there now,
snarling in a most vicious way.
Daniel took the child by the hand and led it back a few steps, after he
had frightened the dog into silence by some rough commands. "Who are
you?" he asked the girl.
"Dorothea Doederlein," was the reply.
"Ah," said Daniel. He could not help but laugh, for there was a comic
tone of precociousness in the girl's manner of speaking. But she was a
very pretty child. A sly, smiling little face peeped out from under her
hood, and her velvet mantle with great pearl buttons enshrouded a dainty
figure.
"You should have been in bed long ago, Dorothea," said Daniel. "What
will the night watchman think when he comes along and finds you up? He
will take you by the collar, and lead you off to jail."
Dorothea told him why she was still up and why she was alone. She had
been visiting a school friend, and the maid who called for her wanted to
get a loaf of bread from the bakery before going up stairs. She related
the story of her meeting with the dog with so much coquetry and detail
that Daniel was delighted at the contrast between this rodomontade and
the quaking anxiety in which he first found her.
"You are a fraud, Dorothea," said Daniel, and called to mind the
unpleasant sensation she aroused in him when he saw her for the first
time years ago.
In the meanwhile the maid had come up with the loaf of bread; she looked
with astonishment at the two as they stood there gossiping, and
immediately took the child into her charge, conscious as she was of her
own dilatoriness. With a few piercing shrieks she drove Caesar back from
the gate, and as he ran across the street Dorothea cast one triumphant
glance back at Daniel, feeling that she had proved to him that she was
not the least afraid of the dog.
II
Frau Benda opened the door, closed it without saying a word, and went
into her room. She had had a violent quarrel with her son, who had just
informed her that he had accepted the invitation of a learned society to
come to England and settle down. He was to start at the end of spring.
Frau Benda was tired of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of
moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in
his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature
renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present
themselves to him at home.
She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time
come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their
miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until
satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and
trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she
felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the
practical experience.
But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it
to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a
change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to
each other.
Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. "She
looks to me as though she will give old Doederlein a good deal to think
about in the days to come," said Daniel.
"You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Doederlein," replied
Benda. "The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and
down for hours right under my bedroom."
"You feel sorry for him, do you?"
"If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon."
"Do you really mean it?" exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel
continued: "To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to
his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would
have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted
to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I'll
get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime
gulped down the whole earth."
Benda smiled a gracious smile. "Yes, you die at each fall, and at each
come-back you appear a new-made man," he said. "That is fine. But a
Doederlein cannot come back, once his contemporaries have thrown him
over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what
gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him."
"Y-e-s," mumbled Daniel, "and yet, what good is he?"
"The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such
conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness," replied Benda in a tone of
serious reflection. "He lives, and that is about all you can say. So far
as I am concerned, I have not the slightest reason to defend a Doederlein
in your presence." He was silent for a moment and took a deep breath. "I
cannot speak more distinctly; somehow or other I cannot quite find the
right words," he continued in a disconcerted way, "but the point is, the
man has committed a crime against a woman, a crime so malicious, subtle,
and naive, that he deserves every stigma with which it is possible to
brand him, and even then he would not be adequately punished."
"You see," exclaimed Daniel, "he is not only a miserable musician. And
that is the way it always is. They are all like that. Oh, these
bitter-sweet, grinning, pajama-bred, match-making, ninnying, super-smart
manikins--it makes your blood curdle to look at one of them. And yet a
real man has got to run the gauntlet before them his whole life long,
and down through their narrow little alleys at that!"
"Rather," said Benda with bowed head. "It is a tough, clammy poison pap.
If you stir it with your finger, you will stick fast, and it will suck
the very marrow out of your bones. But you are speaking for the time
being without precise knowledge of all the pertinent material, as we say
in science. During my study of the cells of plants and animals, I came
to see that a so-called fundamental procreation was out of the question.
I gave expression to this view in a circle of professional colleagues.
They laughed at me. To-day it is no longer possible to oppose the theory
I then advanced. One of my former friends succeeded in making certain
combinations of acetic acid, crystallised by artificial means. When he
made his great discovery known, one of the assembled gentlemen cried
out: 'Be careful, doctorette, or your amido atoms will get out of their
cage.' That is a sample of the base and treacherous fashion in which we
are treated by the very people who we might think were our warmest
friends, for they are apparently trying to reach the same goal that we
are. But you! The world may reject you, and you still have what no one
can take from you. I have to wait in patience until a judge hands down a
decision either condemning me or redeeming me. You? Between you and me
there is the same difference that exists between the seed which, sunk
into the earth, shoots up whether it rains or shines, and some kind of a
utensil which rusts in the store because no one buys it."
He got up and said: "You are the more fortunate of us two, it behooves
me therefore to be the more merciful."
Daniel could make no reply that would console him.
As he went home, he thought of the fidelity and the constant but
unassuming help he had received from Benda. He thought of the refined
and delicate consideration of his friend. He thought especially of that
extraordinary courtesy which was so marked in him, that, for example,
while laughing at a good joke, Benda would stop with open mouth if some
one resumed the conversation: he did not wish to lose anything another
might wish to say to him.
He stopped. It seemed to him that he had neglected the opportunity to
put an especially reassuring, cordial, and unforgettable force into his
final handshake. He would have liked to turn back. But it is not the
custom to turn back; no one in truth can do it.
III
Daniel did not wish to take the mask of Zingarella with him on his
tours. To expose the fragile material to all the risks associated with a
fortuitous life on the road seemed to him an act of impiety. He had
consequently promised Eleanore to leave the mask with her in Jordan's
house during his absence.
Eleanore opened the door; Daniel entered. Gertrude arose from her seat
at the table, and came up to meet him. Her face showed, as it always did
when she saw him, unmistakable traces of resignation, willingness,
submissiveness.
Daniel walked over to the table, took the newspaper wrapping from the
mask, and held it up in the light of the lamp.
"How beautiful!" exclaimed Gertrude, whose senses were now delighted at
the sight of any object that appealed to one's feelings.
"Well, take it, then, Gertrude," said Eleanore, as she leaned both
elbows on the top of the table. "Keep it with you," she continued
somewhat tensely, when she noticed that Gertrude was looking at Daniel
as if to say, "May I?"
"But won't he give it to both of us?" replied Gertrude with a covetous
smile.
"No, no, he simply mentioned me for courtesy's sake," said Eleanore,
quite positively.
"Eleanore, I can scarcely tell you how I feel toward you," said Daniel,
half confused, half angry, and then stopped with conspicuous suddenness
when the fiery blue of her eyes fell upon him.
"You?" she whispered in astonishment, "you?"
"Yes, you," he replied emphatically. "Later I can tell everybody; to-day