The Goose Man
of visits from the women: custom had decreed that they should not be
turned away. The wife of the director of the theatre came in; Martha
Ruebsam came in, and so did the wife of Councillor Kirschner, and the
wives of the butcher, baker, preacher, and physician. And of course the
wife of the apothecary called. No one of them failed to pour out an
abundance of gratuitous advice or go into ecstasies over the beauty of
the baby. Once Daniel came in just as such an assemblage was in the sick
room. He looked first at one, then at another, threw back his head, and
left without saying a word.
Herr Seelenfromm and M. Riviere were likewise not frightened by the
distance; they called. Eleanore met them in the hall, and got rid of
them by the usual method. And one day even Herr Carovius came around to
inquire how mother and child were doing. Philippina received him; and
Philippina was having a hard time of it at present: she was not allowed
to enter Gertrude's room; Gertrude would have nothing to do with her;
she refused to see her.
So that she might not get too far behind with her work--for it meant
her daily bread--Eleanore pushed the table up to the window, and despite
the poor light, kept on writing. In the evening she would sit by the
lamp and write, although she was so tired that she could hardly keep her
eyes open.
After three days, Gertrude had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed
with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as
it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or
Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in.
Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across
the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby
did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached.
Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, her oppression. Not even
Daniel noticed that there was anything wrong with her.
She had very little opportunity to talk with him. And yet there was
probably not another pair of eyes in the whole world that could be so
eloquent and communicative with admonition, promise, request, and
cordial resignation. One evening they met each other at the kitchen
door: "Eleanore, I am stifling," he whispered to her.
She laid her hands on his shoulder, and looked at him in silence.
"Come with me," he urged with a stupid air. "Come with me! Let's run
off."
Eleanore smiled and thought to herself: "The demands of his soul are
always a few leagues in advance of the humanly possible."
The next morning he stormed into the room. Eleanore was only half
dressed. With an expression of wrath flitting across her face she
reached for a towel and draped it about her shoulders. He sat down on
Gertrude's bed, and let loose a torrent of words: "I am going to set
Goethe's 'Wanderers Sturmlied' to music! I am planning to make it a
companion piece to the 'Harzreise' and publish the two in a cycle. I
have not slept the whole night. The main motif is glorious." He began to
hum it over in a falsetto voice: "'Oh, mortal man, if genius does not
forsake thee, neither rain nor storm can breathe upon thy heart!' How do
you like that?"
Gertrude looked at him inspired.
"I should have a good drink on that idea," he continued; "I have rarely
felt such a longing for a flask of old wine. It's a bloody shame that I
can't afford it. But you wait till I get a little money, and you will
see a _bouteille_ of Tokay on my table every day."
"My God, just listen how he raves! He's going to have the best there
is," said Philippina angrily, as she entered the room in her stocking
feet and heard Daniel's remarks.
Daniel told her to keep her mouth shut and leave the room at once. He
paid no attention to her reply, and cried out: "Something has got to
happen. If I can't drink, I at least want to dance. Dance with me,
Eleanore; don't be afraid, come, dance with me!" He threw his arms
around her, pressed her to his bosom, sang a waltz melody, and drew the
struggling and embarrassed girl across the floor.
Philippina broke out in her slimy, malicious laughter, and then shrieked
at the top of her voice that Frau Kirschner was outside and wanted to
see the Kapellmeister's wife. Gertrude made an imploring gesture, the
full meaning of which Daniel easily grasped. The baby began to cry,
Eleanore tore herself away from Daniel's embrace, arranged her hair, and
hastened over to the cradle. Philippina opened the door to let the
Councillor's wife in. Just then a violent discussion was started in the
hall. One could hear the voice of Jordan and that of some strange man.
It was the furniture dealer who had come to collect the money for the
cradle. He was boiling with the rage that cares not how it may be
expressed: he said he had already been there four times, and each time
he was put off. The truth is, Daniel was very hard up.
The Councillor's wife took Daniel to one side, and made him an offer of
a loan of two hundred marks. Daniel was silent; he bit his lips, and
looked down at the floor. She scolded him: "You are always your own
worst enemy. Now be reasonable, Nothafft, I will send the money over at
noon. If you have any left, you may pay it back."
Daniel went out, and gave the blustering furniture dealer his last
ten-mark piece.
Frau Kirschner had brought a flask of Tokay wine with her for Gertrude.
Tokay was regarded at that time as a sort of elixir of life.
"You see, so quickly are wishes fulfilled," said Gertrude to Daniel in
the evening, when he came into her room. She poured out a glass for him.
"Have you any bills to settle?" he asked, looking partly at Eleanore,
partly at Gertrude, and striking his wallet, then bulging with notes.
"It's Court Councillor's money," he said, "real Court Councillor's
money. How beautiful it looks, lousy fine, eh? And upon that stuff the
salvation of my soul depends!" He threw the money on Gertrude's bed,
stuck out his tongue, and turned away in disgust.
Eleanore handed him the glass of Tokay; her eyes glistened with tears.
"No, Eleanore," he said, "I have trifled it away. In my arrogance I
imagined I could do something; I thought I could get somewhere. I sit
down, brood over my ideas, and find that they are all wind-eggs. I have
the feeling that I have taken a false oath. What good am I, Eleanore,
what good am I, Gertrude?"
"Ah, take a drink, and perhaps your troubles will leave you," said
Eleanore, and stroked his brow with her hand.
Gertrude called out to her: "Quit that! Put that glass away!" She spoke
so harshly that Eleanore sprang back, and Daniel got up.
"Leave me alone for a while," she said. Daniel and Eleanore left the
room.
Eleanore went into the living room, sat down at the table, and laid her
head in her hands. "What can we do now?" she said to Daniel. The violin
tone in her voice had something unusually touching about it.
Daniel set the candle he was carrying in the bay window. He bent down
over the table, and took Eleanore by her small wrists. "Accept the
bitter for the sake of the sweet," he murmured. "Believe in me, believe
in yourself, believe in the higher law. It is not possible that I merely
imagined that there is a winged creature for me. I must have something
to cling to, something indestructible, ah, even superhuman."
"You must have something superhuman to cling to," Eleanore repeated
after him. She could not help but think that he had already made
superhuman demands of the other woman, his wife, her sister, Gertrude.
She raised her finger as if to warn him: it was a gesture of infinite
timidity.
But Daniel scarcely saw what she had done. In his arrogant presumption
and passion he could have smashed the universe to pieces, and then
re-created it merely in order to mould this one creature after his own
desires. He would have made her of boundless pliability, and yet active
in her love for him; he would have had her spurn venerable commandments
in a spirit of self-glorification, and yet cherish unequivocal
confidence in him, the creature of need and defiance; and she would be
cheerful withal.
"I am cold," whispered Eleanore, peering into the dark shadows of the
room.
VIII
To know that these eyes and their pure passion were so close to him; to
be able to touch this cool, sincere, mutely-eloquent mouth with his
lips; to be able to hold these hands in which passion resided as it does
in the speechless unrest of a messenger; to be able to press this
throbbing figure with all its willingness and hesitation to his
bosom--it was almost too much for Daniel. It involved pain; it aroused
an impatience, a thirst for more and more. His daily work was
interrupted; his thoughts, plans, and arrangements were torn from their
connection.
He spoke to people whom he knew as though they were total strangers; he
amazed those whom he did not know by the loyal confidence he voluntarily
placed in them. He forgot to put on his hat when he walked along the
street; the distraction he revealed was the source of constant merriment
to passersby and on-lookers. He would not know when it was noon; he would
come home at three o'clock, thinking it was twelve. Once he came nearly
being run over by a team of galloping horses; another time he had his
umbrella taken straight from his hands without noticing it. This took
place at the Ludwig Station.
"Oh, winged creature, winged creature," he would say to himself, and
smile like a somnambulist. Deep in his soul a sea of tones was surging.
He listened to them with complete assurance, angry though he would
become at times because of the failure of this or that. He was so
absorbed in himself, so enmeshed in his own thoughts, that he scarcely
saw the sky above him; houses, people, animals, and the things that are
after all necessary to human existence existed only in his dreams, if at
all.
Winged creature, winged creature!
IX
As soon as Gertrude could get up and go about, Eleanore accepted an
invitation from Martha Ruebsam to visit her aunt, Frau Seelenfromm, in
Altdorf. The visit was to last two weeks. Eleanore looked upon it as a
test that would determine whether she could do anything on her own
account now: whether she could get along without Daniel.
But she saw that she could no longer live without him. In the lonely
house she came to the conclusion that her love was great enough to
enable her to bear the monstrous burden fate had been trying to impose
upon her. She saw that neither flight nor concealment nor anything else
could save her, could save Daniel, could give back to Gertrude what she
had lost, what had been taken from her.
There were times, to be sure, when she asked herself whether it was all
true and real; whether it could be possible. She walked in darkness
surrounded by demons. Her being was plunged into the deepest and
strangest bewilderment; confusion enveloped her; there was sorrow in the
effort she made to avert the inexorable.
But in one of her sleepless nights she thought she was covering Daniel's
mind with a flame of fire; she thought she heard his voice calling out
to her with a power she had never known before.
No one she had ever seen was so vivacious, so alive as he. Her
slumbering fancy had awakened at the sound of his voice and the feel of
his warm breath. She felt that people owed him a great deal; and since
they did not seem inclined to pay their debts, it was her duty to make
restitution to Daniel for their neglect.
She could not survey the ways of his art: the musician in him made
neither a strange nor a special appeal to her. She grasped and felt only
him himself; to her he was Daniel. She grasped and felt only the man who