The Goose Man
present state of his affairs. The landlord approved of the idea. In the
house where Daniel and Gertrude were living there were two vacant rooms
in the attic. Gertrude suggested to her father that it would be well for
him to take them. Jordan agreed with her.
Eleanore began to think the situation over: if Father moves into those
rooms, I can leave him. She learned from Gertrude, who came now to see
her father every other day, that Daniel had received the appointment as
Kapellmeister at the City Theatre. Eleanore could carry out her plans
then with a clear conscience, for her brother-in-law and her sister were
getting along quite well at present.
She recalled some conversations she had had with M. Riviere, who had
advised her to go to Paris. Since Christmas, when he was invited to be
present at the distribution of the presents, he had been coming to
Jordan's quite frequently to talk French with Eleanore. This was in
accord with her express desire.
One afternoon she went to visit M. Riviere. He was living in the
romantic place up by the gardener on Castle Hill. His room had a balcony
that was completely overgrown with ivy and elder, while in the
background the trees and bushes of the city moat formed an impenetrable
maze of green. The spring air floated into the room in waves. As
Eleanore made her business known, she fixed her enchanted eyes on a
bouquet of lilies of the valley that stood on the table in a bronze
vase.
M. Riviere took a handful of them, and gave them to her. They had not
been cut; they had been pulled up by the roots. Eleanore laughed happily
at the fragrance.
M. Riviere said he was just about to write to his mother in Paris, and
as she was so familiar with the city, she could be of great help to
Eleanore.
Eleanore stepped out on the balcony. "The world is beautiful," she
thought, and smiled at the fruitless efforts of a tiny beetle to climb
up a perpendicular leaf. "Perhaps it was after all merely a dream," she
thought, and thereby consoled herself.
When she returned, Daniel was at her father's. The two men were sitting
in the dark.
Eleanore lighted the lamp. Then she filled a glass with water, and put
the lilies of the valley in it.
"Daniel wants to know why you never visit them any more," said Jordan,
weak and distraught as he now always was. "I told him you were busy at
present with great plans of your own. Well, what does the Frenchman
think about it?"
Eleanore answered her father's question in a half audible voice.
"Go wherever you want to go, child," said Jordan. "You have been
prepared for an independent life in the world for a long while; there is
no doubt about that. God forbid that I should put any hindrances in your
way." He got up with difficulty, and turned toward the door of his room.
Taking hold of the latch, he stopped, and continued in his brooding way:
"It is peculiar that a man can die by inches in a living body; that a
man can have the feeling that he's no longer a part of the present; and
that he can no longer play his role, keep up with his own people, grasp
what is going on about him, or know whether what is to come is good or
evil. It is fearful when a man reaches that stage, fearful--fearful!"
He left the room, shaking his head. To Daniel his words sounded like a
voice from the grave.
They had been silent for a long while, he and Eleanore. Suddenly he
asked gruffly: "Are you serious about going to Paris?"
"Of course I am," she said, "what else can I do?"
He sprang up, and looked angrily into her face: "One has to be ashamed
of one's self," he said, "human language becomes repulsive. Don't you
have a feeling of horror when you think? Don't you shudder when you
reflect on that caricature known as the heart, or the soul, or whatever
it may be called?"
"I don't understand you, Daniel," said Eleanore. She would never have
considered it possible that he would look with disfavour on her
contrition and the decision that had sprung from it. Then it had not
after all been the flash of a solitary second? Had she not hoped and
expected to hear a self-accusation from him that would make her forget
all and forgive herself? Where was she? In what world or age was she
living?
"Do you believe that I merely wanted to enjoy a diverting and momentary
side-step?" Daniel continued, measuring her with his eyes from head to
foot. "Do you believe that it is possible to jest with the most sacred
laws of nature? You have had a good schooling, I must say; you do your
teachers honour. Go! I don't need you. Go to Paris, and let me
degenerate!"
He stepped to the door. Then he turned, and took the lamp, which she had
removed from the holder when she lighted it. Holding the lamp in his
right hand, he walked close up to her. Her eyes closed involuntarily.
"I simply wanted to see whether it was really you," he said with
passionate contempt. "Yes, it is you," he said scornfully, "it is you."
With that he placed the lamp on the table.
"I don't understand you, Daniel," she said softly. She looked around for
some object to rest her eyes on.
"So I see. Good night."
"Daniel!"
But he had already gone. The hall door closed with a bang. The house
sang with solitude.
The green threadbare sofa, the old, old smoke stains on the whitewashed
ceiling, the five rickety chairs that reminded her of so many decrepit
old men, the mirror with the gilded angel of stucco at the top--all
these things were so tiring, so irksome, so annoying: they were like
underbrush in the forest.
Little brother! Little brother!
IV
Three evenings of the week were devoted to opera, the others to drama.
The first Kapellmeister was a middle-aged man whose curly hair made him
the idol of all flappers. He was lazy, uncultivated, and his name was
Lebrecht.
The director was an old stager who referred to the public about as a
disrespectful footman refers to his lord. At Daniel's suggestions for
improving the repertory, he generally shrugged his shoulders. The operas
in which he had the greatest confidence as drawing cards were "The
Beggar Student," "Fra Diavolo," "L'Africaine," and "Robert le Diable."
The singers and the orchestra were not much better than those of the
lamented Doermaul-Wurzelmann troupe. The possibility of arousing them to
intensified effort or filling them with a semblance of intelligent
enthusiasm for art was even less. Privileges based on length of service
and the familiar traditions of indolence made aesthetic innovations
unthinkable.
Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats
from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of
sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is
reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In
such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit
has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective
demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat.
"Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,"
said the director.
"What are you so excited about? Don't you know these people haven't a
musical muscle in their whole soul?" said Lebrecht.
"For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera
house, and now here comes a _musicien_ from the backwoods and demands
all of a sudden that I sing F!" This was the commentary of Fraeulein
Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source
of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.
"Ah, he is a greasy grind determined to arrive," said the first
violinist.
"He's a spit-fire," said the lad who beat the big drum, when Daniel
threatened to box his ears for a false intonation.
The Baroness had secured a publisher in Leipzig for his cycle of sixteen
songs; the compositions were to be brought out at her expense. That did
not have the right effect: it was not something, Daniel felt, that he
had fought for and won; it was not a case where merit had made rejection
impossible. He had the feeling that he was selling his soul and was
being paid to do it. Moreover, and worst of all, he had to express his
gratitude for this act. The Baroness loved to have somebody thank her
for what she had done. She never once suspected that what Daniel wanted
was not benefactors, but people who were stirred to the depths of their
souls by his creations. The rich cannot sense the feelings of the poor;
the higher classes remain out of contact with the lower.
His excitability saved him. In his magnificent solicitude for the
mission that is at once the token and the curse of those who are really
called, he shut himself off from a world from which the one thing he
wanted was bread; bread and nothing else.
After the publication of the songs a review appeared in the _Phoenix_
which had a remarkably realistic ring to the ear of the layman. As a
matter of fact it was merely an underhanded attempt at assassination.
The thing was signed with a big, isolated "W." Wurzelmann, the little
slave, had shot from his ambush.
Other musical journals copied this review. A half dozen people bought
the songs; then they were forgotten.
It was no use to hope. The trouble was, he needed bread, just bread.
V
It was often difficult for him to find the peace and quiet necessary for
effective work. May brought cold weather; they had to make a fire; the
stove smoked; the potter came in and removed the tiles; the room looked
like an inferno.
Gertrude was pounding sugar: "Don't be angry at me, Daniel; I must pound
the sugar to-day." And she pounded away until the hammer penetrated the
paralysed brain of the listener by force of circumstances.
The hinges of the door screeched. "You ought to oil them, Gertrude."
Gertrude looked high and low for the oil can, and when she finally found
it, she had no feather to use in smearing the oil on. She went over to
the chancellor's, and borrowed one from her maid. While she was gone,
the milk boiled over and filled the house with a disagreeable stench.
The door bell rang. It was the cobbler; he had come to get the money for
the patent leather shoes. The wives of Herr Kirschner and Herr Ruebsam
had both said that Daniel must not think of appearing at the coming
recital at the Baroness's without patent leather shoes.
"I haven't the money, Gertrude; have you got that much?"
Gertrude went through her chests, and scraped up five marks which she
gave the cobbler as a first instalment. The man went away growling;
Daniel hid from him.
Gertrude was sitting in the living room making clothes for her
baby-to-come. There was a happy expression on her face. Daniel knew that
it was a display of maternal joy and expectation, but since he could not
share this joy, since indeed he felt a sense of fear at the appearance
of the child, her happiness embittered him.
Between the fuchsias in the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish
bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room:
"Come out," it chirped, "come out." And Daniel went.
He had an engagement with M. Riviere at the cafe by the market place.
Since he no longer saw anything of Eleanore, he wanted to find out how
her plans for going to Paris were getting along.
The Frenchman told of the progress he was making in his Caspar Hauser
research. In his broken German he told of the murder of body and soul
that had been committed in the case of the foundling: "He was a mortal
man _comme une etoile_," he said. "The bourgeoisie crushed him. The
bourgeoisie is the _racine_ of all evil."
Daniel never mentioned Eleanore's name. He tried to satisfy himself by
the fact that she kept out of his sight. He bit his lips together, and