The Goose Man
most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language
which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made
an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.
When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he
had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She
submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit
him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of
his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies
were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured
soul from which they came.
She felt that Eleanore was lying, and that the lie she was telling was
somehow connected with Daniel. That is why she went up to Eleanore's bed
in the dead of night, and whispered into her ear: "Tell me, Eleanore,
has anything happened to Daniel?"
But before Eleanore could reply, reassured by her sister's astonished
behaviour, and angry at herself for having suspected Eleanore of a
falsehood, she hurried back to her own bed. She had come to think more
and more of her sister every day.
"How she must love him," thought Eleanore to herself, and buried her
smiling face in the pillow.
VII
"Wait for me at the fountain," said Eleanore to her companion, as she
crossed the market place in Eschenbach at midday: "I'll call for you as
soon as everything has been discussed."
The coachman pointed out the little house of the widow Nothafft.
A woman with a stern face and unusually large eyebrows asked her what
she wanted as she entered the little shop, which smelled of vinegar and
cheese.
Eleanore replied that she would like to talk with her for a few minutes
quite undisturbed and alone.
The profound seriousness of Marian's features, which resembled more than
anything else an incurable suffering, did not disappear. She closed the
shop and took Eleanore into the living room, and, without saying a word,
pointed to one chair and took another herself.
Above the leather sofa hung the picture of Gottfried Nothafft. Eleanore
looked at it for a long while.
"Dear mother," she finally began, laying her hand on Marian's knee. "I
am bringing you something from Daniel."
Marian twitched. "Good or bad?" she asked. She had not heard from Daniel
for twenty-two months. "Who are you?" she asked, "what have you to do
with him?"
Eleanore saw at once that she would have to be extremely cautious if she
did not wish to offend the sensitive--and offended--woman by some
inconsiderate remark. With all the discrimination she could command she
laid her case before Daniel's mother.
And behold--the unusual became usual, just as the natural seemed
strange. Eleanore pictured Daniel's hardships and rise to fame, boasted
loyally of his talents and of the enthusiasm for him of those who
believed in him, referred to his future renown, and insisted that all
his guilt, including that toward his mother, be forgotten and forgiven.
Marian reviewed the past; she understood a great many things now that
were not clear to her years ago; she understood Daniel better; she
understood virtually everything, except this girl's relation to him and
the girl herself. If it was peculiar that this strange woman had to come
to her to tell her who Daniel was and what he meant to the people, it
was wholly inexplicable that she had brought some one with her who had
been the sweetheart of the very man for whom she now showed unreserved
affection.
Eleanore read Marian's face and became a trifle more deliberate. It
occurred to her, too, to ask herself a few questions: What am I, any
way? What is the matter with me?
She could not give a satisfactory answer to these questions. His friend?
He my friend? The words seemed to contain too much peace and calm.
Brother? Companion? Either of these words brought up pictures of
intimate association, inner relationship. Little Brother! Yes, that is
what she had called out to him once from behind the mask. Well then:
Little sister behind the mask?
Yes, that was what it should be: Little sister behind the mask. She had
to have a hiding place for so many things of which she had only a vague
presentiment and which in truth she did not care to visualise in
brighter outlines. A subdued heart, a captured heart--it glows, it cools
off, you lift it up, you weigh it down just as fate decrees. To be
patient, not to betray anything, that was the all-important point:
Little sister behind the mask--that was the idea.
Marian said: "My child, God himself has inspired you with the idea of
coming to me and telling me about Daniel. I will put fresh flowers in
the window as I did some time ago, and I will leave the front door open
so that the swallows can fly in and build their nests. Perhaps he will
think then from time to time of his mother."
Then she asked to see Meta. Eleanore went out, and returned in a few
minutes with her charge. Marian looked at the pregnant girl
compassionately. Meta was ill at ease; to every question that was put to
her she made an incoherent reply. She could stay with her, said Marian,
but she would have to work, for there was no other way for the two to
live. The girl referred to the fact that she had already worked out for
four years, and that no one had ever accused her of lack of industry or
willingness. Thereupon Marian told her she would have to be very quiet,
that the people in the neighbourhood were very curious, and that if she
ever gave them her family history she would have to leave.
This attended to, Eleanore went on her way. She refused quite
emphatically to stay for dinner. Marian thought that she was in a hurry
to catch the next coach, and accompanied her across the square. They
promised to write to each other; before Eleanore got into the rickety
old coach, Marian kissed her on the cheek.
She watched the coach until it had passed out through the city gate. A
drunken man poked her in the ribs, the blacksmith called to her as she
passed by, the doctor's wife leaned out of the window and asked her who
the cityfied lady was. Marian paid not the slightest attention to any of
them; she went quietly and slowly back to her house.
VIII
Thus it came about that five weeks later a daughter of Daniel Nothafft
saw the light of the world under Marian's roof.
As soon as the child was born, Marian took a great liking to it, despite
the fact that she had thought of it before its birth only with aversion.
It was a fine little creature: its little legs and arms were delicately
formed, its head was small, there was something peculiarly human about
its first cries and laughter, and it showed quite distinctly that there
was something noble in its character.
The people of Eschenbach were astonished. "Where did the child come
from?" they asked. "Who is its mother? Who is its father?" The records
in the office of the registrar of births showed that Meta Steinhaeger was
the mother of the illegitimate child, Eva Steinhaeger, and that its
father was unknown.
It was to be presumed, however, that widow Nothafft knew the details.
The old women, and the young ones too, came on this account more
frequently now than ever to her shop. They wanted to know how the little
thing was getting along, whether its milk agreed with it, whether it had
begun to teethe, whether it would speak German or some foreign tongue,
and so on.
In order to quiet them, Marian told them that Meta was a poor relative
and that she was bringing up the child at her own expense. It was not
difficult to make this story seem plausible, for Meta had very little to
do with her daughter. Shortly after her confinement, she got a job with
a baker over in Dinkelsbuehl, and never visited Eva more than once a
month. She cared very little for the child. A young fellow in the bakery
had fallen in love with Meta, and wanted to marry her and move to
America.
At Christmas they were married, and left the country at once. Marian was
glad of it: the child now belonged entirely to her.
Though the people soon became accustomed to the existence of their
diminutive fellow-townswoman, Eva was and remained the mysterious child
of Eschenbach.
IX
The opera company made its rounds through the small cities that lie
between the Danube and the Main, the Saale and the Neckar--and there are
many of them,--its stay in any one place depending naturally on the
interest shown by the public.
"The province is the enchanted Sleeping Beauty," said the impresario
Doermaul to Wurzelmann and Daniel, "the province is still asleep, and you
must rouse it from its slumbers by pressing the kiss of the Muse on its
forehead."
But the impresario was unwilling to open his pockets. The princes who
were to release Sleeping Beauty did not have sufficient means to make a
presentable appearance, while their retinue was seedy-looking indeed.
The tenor had long since passed the zenith of his career. His massive
paunch placed deadening strictures on his credentials as the
impersonator of heroes. The buffo was an inveterate toper who had often
been placed behind bars by the police for his nocturnal excesses. The
barytone had a big lawsuit on his hands about an estate; his lawyers
were two stars of obscurity from a small village; and at times he became
so vexed at the cuts of his opponents that he lost his voice. The
soprano was incessantly quarrelling with her colleagues, and the alto
was an intriguing vixen quite without talent. In addition to these there
were a dozen or so super-numeraries and under-studies, who were bored, who
played practical jokes on each other, drew starvation wages, and had
never learned anything.
The musicians were also a sorry lot. It was not rare that one or the
other of them had pawned his instrument. Once a performance had to be
postponed because the violinists had stayed over their time at a village
dance where they were playing in order to add to their paltry income.
The inspector, who was scene-shifter, promoter, ticket seller, and
publicity agent all in one, and who was not equal to any of these
positions, took French leave in the second year and ran off with one of
the chorus girls, taking the box-office receipts for the evening with
him.
One time the costumes were sent to the wrong address, with the result
that Boieldieu's "La Dame Blanche" had to be played in woollen frocks,
patched velvet skirts, filthy cotton blouses, and French wadding.
Another time the mob in "Martha" consisted of a distempered woman, a
waiter brought in at the last minute from a herring restaurant, and the
door-keeper of an orphanage: the chorus had gone on a strike because
their salaries had been held up.
In Karlstadt the final act of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" could not be
played, because during the intermission Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly had
got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from
the singer's nose.
If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the
company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman
efforts of Daniel. Wurzelmann was always mixed up in some kind of love
affair, introduced in time a ruinous system of favouritism, and became
lazier and lazier as the weeks passed by.
Daniel had to pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to
rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was
too weak; Daniel had to distribute the roles, tame down refractory
women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to
the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to
drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce