The Goose Man
said: I will. But a stronger power in him said, No, you won't. And this
stronger power became a beggar. It went around saying, Give me, please,
give me!
The billiard balls rattled. A gentleman in a red velvet vest had a
quarrel with a shabby looking fellow who had been reading _Fliegende
Blaetter_ for the last two hours; he would begin over and over again at
the very beginning, and break out into convulsions of laughter every
time he came to his favourite jokes.
Daniel was silent; he insisted somehow on remaining silent. M. Riviere
wished, for this reason, to hear something about the "Harzreise." By way
of starting a discussion he remarked quite timidly that _sans musique la
vie est insupportable_, "There is something about music that reminds one
of insanity," he remarked. He said there were nights when he would open
a volume of Schubert's or Brahms's songs, leaf through them, read the
notes, and hum the melodies simply in order to escape the despair which
the conduct of the people about him was emptying into his heart. "_Moi_,
I ought to be, how do you say? stoic; _mais_ I am not. In me there is
_trop de musique, et c'est le contraire_."
Daniel looked at him in astonishment. "Come with me," he said suddenly,
got up, and took him by the arm.
They met Eleanore in the hall. She had been up in the new flat with the
whitewasher. Her father was to move in the following day.
"Why was all this done so quickly?" asked Daniel, full of a vague
happiness that drew special nourishment from the fact that Eleanore was
plainly excited.
"Mere chance," she said, and carefully avoided looking at him. "A
captain who is being transferred here from Ratisbon is moving in our
place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer
is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in
those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a
minute or two?"
"Yes, go right up," said Daniel stiffly; "you can stay and listen if you
wish to. I am going to play the Harzreise."
"If I wish to? I almost have a right to; you promised me this long ago."
"She thinks after all that I want to catch her," he thought to himself.
"It will be better for me to drop the whole business than to let the
idea creep into her stupid skull that my composition is going to make
propaganda for our private affairs." With bowed head he ascended the
stairs, M. Riviere and Eleanore following along behind. His ears were
pricked to hear anything they might say about Paris; they talked about
the weather.
As they entered the room Gertrude had the harp between her knees; but
she was not playing. Her hands lay on the strings, her head was resting
on the frame. "Why haven't you lighted a lamp?" asked Daniel angrily.
She was terrified; she looked at him anxiously. The expression on her
face made him conscious of many things that he had kept in the
background of his thoughts during his everyday life: her unconditional
surrender to him; the magnanimity and nobility of her heart, which was
as dependent on his as the mercury in the thermometer is dependent on
the atmosphere; her speechless resignation regarding a thousand little
things in her life! her wellnigh supernatural ability to enter into the
spirit and enjoyment of what he was doing, however much his mind might
presume to write _De profundis_ across his creations.
It was on this account that he recognised in her face a serious,
far-away warning. At once cowardly and reverential, conscious of his
guilt and yet feeling innocent, he went up to her and kissed her on the
hair. She leaned her head on his breast, thus causing him to feel,
though quite unaware of it herself, the whole weight of the burden she
was placing on him.
He told her he was going to play. He said: "I have lost my picture
again; I want to try to find it in others."
Gertrude begged him, with a pale face, to be permitted to stay in the
living room. She closed the door only partly.
VI
In Goethe's verses entitled "Harzreise im Winter," thoughts lie
scattered about like erratic strata in the world of geology, and
feelings that are as big and terrible as the flames from burning
planets. In Daniel's work the whole of Goethe's prodigious sorrow and
solemnity seemed to have been transformed automatically into music.
When, in the second half, the motif of human voices was taken over, when
these voices pealed forth first singly, one by one, from the surging
sea of tones, and then gathered with ever-increasing avidity, longing,
and candour into the great chorus, one had the feeling that without this
liberation they would have been stifled in the darkness.
The effect of the pianissimo moaning of the basses before the soprano
set in was overwhelming: it was like the vulture which, resting with
easy wing on the dark morning cloud, spies around for booty. So was the
song meant to be. The trombone solo was a shout of victory: it imparted
new life to the sunken orchestra.
Daniel had infinite trouble in making all this wealth of symbolic art
clear through song, word, and gesture at the same time that his music
was being played.
The work abounded in blends and half tones which stamped it as a child
of its age, and still more of ages to come, despite the compact rigidity
of its architecture. There was no bared sweetness in it; it was as rough
as the bark of a tree; it was as rough as anything that is created with
the assurance of inner durability.
Its rhythm was uniform, regular; it provided only for crescendos. There
was nothing of the seductive, nothing of the waltz-fever in it. It was
in no way cheap; it did not flatter slothful ears. It had no languishing
motifs; it was all substance and exterior. The melody was concealed like
a hard kernel in a thick shell; and not merely concealed: it was
divided, and then the divisions were themselves divided. It was
condensed, compressed, bound, and at the same time subterranean. It was
created to rise from its depths, rejoice, and overwhelm: "But clothe the
lonely one in thy clouds of gold! Enshroud with ivy until the roses
bloom again, oh Love, the dampened hair of thy poet!"
The work was written a quarter of a century before its time. It was out
of touch with the nerves of its contemporary environment. It could not
hope to count upon a prophet or an interpreter. It could not be carried
further by the benevolence of congenial champions. It bore the marks of
mortal neglect. It was like a bird from the tropics left to die on the
icy coasts of Greenland.
But for those who are near in heart there is a fluid in the air that
intercedes for the higher truth. M. Riviere and Eleanore scarcely
breathed during the recital. Eleanore's big eyes were still: they opened
and closed slowly. When Daniel finished, he dried his hot brow with his
handkerchief, and then his arms fell limp at his sides. He felt as if
the brilliancy of Eleanore's eyes had reached the tips of his hair and
had electrified it.
"Enshroud with ivy, until the roses bloom again, oh Love, the dampened
hair of thy poet!"
"It is impossible to get an idea of it," murmured Daniel; "the piano is
like an instrument of torture."
They were struck by peculiar sounds coming from the living room. They
went in, and found Gertrude pale as death, her hands folded across her
bosom, sitting on the sofa. She was talking to herself, partly as if in
a dream, partly as if she were praying. It was impossible to understand
what she was saying. She seemed distant, estranged.
Eleanore hastened to her; Daniel looked at her with a scowl. Just then
the bell rang, and M. Riviere went out. There was the sound of a man's
voice; it was disagreeable. The door was opened and--Herr Carovius
entered.
VII
Herr Carovius bowed in all directions. He wore tan shoes with brass
buckles, black trousers, a shiny green coat, and a white cravat that
could no longer be called clean. He laid his slouch hat on a chair, and
said he would like to beg their pardon if he had called at an
inopportune hour. He had come, he said, to thank his dear young master
for the aforementioned invitation.
"It seems--yes, it seems," he added, with a droll blinking of his eyes,
"that I have in all innocence interrupted the performance of a most
interesting production. There is a crowd of people gathered out in front
of the house, and I could not forego the pleasure of listening. I hope
you will not stop playing the sacrificial festival on my account. What
was it, _maestro_? It wasn't the symphony, was it?"
"Yes, it was the symphony," replied Daniel, who was so amazed at the
appearance and conduct of the man that he was really courteous.
"It cost me money to be sure--believe it or not. I had to get an
afternoon coat that would do for a Count--latest cut, velvet collar,
tails that reached down to my calves. Aristocratic, very!" He stared
over Gertrude's head into the corner, and tittered for at least a half a
minute.
Nobody said a word. Everybody was dumb, astounded.
"Good lord, social obligations," continued Herr Carovius, "but after all
you can't afford to be a backwoodsman. Music is supposed to ennoble a
man even externally. By the way, there is a rumour afloat that it is a
symphony with chorus. How did you happen upon the idea? The laurels of
the Ninth will not let you sleep? I would have thought that you didn't
give a damn about classical models. Everybody is so taken up now with
musical lullabies, _wage-la-wei-a_, that kind of stuff, you know. But
then I suppose that is only a transition stage, as the fox said when he
was being skinned."
He took off his nose glasses, polished them very hastily, fumbled for a
while with his cord, and then put them on again. Having gained time in
this way, he began to expatiate on the decadence of the arts, asked
Daniel whether he had ever heard anything about a certain Hugo Wolf who
was being much talked about and who was sitting in darkest Austria
turning out songs like a Hottentot, made a number of derogatory remarks
about a fountain that was being erected in the city, said that a company
of dancers had just appeared at the Cultural Club in a repertory of
grotesque pantomimes, remarked that as he was coming over he learned
that there was an institution in the city that loaned potato sacks, and
that there had just been a fearful fire in Constantinople.
Thereupon he looked first at Daniel, then at M. Riviere, took the snarls
of the one and the embarrassment of the other to be encouraging signs
for the continuation of his gossip, readjusted his glasses, and sneezed.
Then he smoothed out the already remarkably smooth hairs he had left on
his head, rubbed his hands as if he were beginning to feel quite at
home, and tittered when there was any sign of a stoppage in his asinine
eloquence.
At times he would cast a stealthy glance at Gertrude, who would draw
back somewhat as the arm of a thief who feels he is being watched.
Eleanore did not seem to be present so far as he was concerned: he did
not see her. Finally she got up. She was tortured by the interruption of
what she had just experienced from the music and by his flat, stale, and
unprofitable remarks. Then he got up too, looked at his watch as if he
were frightened, asked if he might repeat his visit at another time,
took leave of Gertrude with a silly old-fashioned bow, from Daniel with
a confidential handshake, and from the Frenchman with uncertain
courtesy. Eleanore he again entirely overlooked.
Out in the hall he stopped, nodded several times, and said with an
almost insane grin, speaking into the empty air before him: "_Auf
Wiedersehen_, fair one! _Auf Wiedersehen_, fairest of all! Good-bye, my
angel! Forget me not!"