The Goose Man
not like the books, he regarded all this printed matter as a jolly fine
deception practised on people who did not know what to do with their
money. Zwanziger, the clerk, had married the widow of a cheese merchant,
and was running a shop of his own on the Regensburg Chaussee.
"A rotten business," said Jason Philip at the end of each month. "The
trouble with me," he invariably added, "is that I have been too much of
an idealist. If I had worked as hard for myself as I have for other
people, I would be a rich man to-day."
He went to the cafe and discussed politics. He had developed into a
perpetual grumbler; he was pleased with nothing, neither the government
nor the opposition. To hear him talk you would have thought that the
opposing parties had been forced to narrow their platforms down to the
differences between the views of Prince Bismarck and Jason Philip
Schimmelweis. When Kaiser Wilhelm I died, Jason Philip acted as though
his appointment to the chancellorship was imminent. And when in that
same memorable year Kaiser Friedrich succumbed to his sufferings, Jason
Philip resembled the pilot on whose isolated fearlessness the rescue of
the storm-tossed ship of state depends.
The born hero always finds a sphere of activity, a forum from which to
express his views. If public life has rejected him, he goes to the cafe,
where he is sure to find a congenial element.
One day Theresa got up from the bed where she had spent fifteen unbroken
months, and seemed all of a sudden completely recovered. The physician
said it was the strangest case that had ever come under his observation.
But Jason Philip said: "It is the triumph of a good constitution." With
that he went to the cafe, drank beer, made fiery political speeches, and
played skat.
But Theresa left her bed not as a woman forty-six years old--that was
her age--but as a woman of seventy. She had only a few sparsely
distributed grey hairs left on her square head, her face was full of
wrinkles, her eye was hard and cold. From that time on, however, she did
not seem to age. She did not quarrel any more, attended to her affairs
in a straightforward, self-assured way, and observed her increasing
impoverishment with unexpected calm.
She lived on herring, potatoes, and coffee; it was the same diet on
which Philippina and Markus lived, with the one exception that Markus,
as the child nearest her heart, was allowed a piece of sugar for his
coffee. Jason Philip was also put on a diet: he never dared open his
mouth about it, either.
Philippina stood it for a while in silence; finally she said to her
mother: "I can't stand this chicory brew forever."
"Then you'll have to lap up water, you will," replied Theresa.
"No, I won't," said Philippina. "I am going to hire out."
"Well, hire out. Who cares? It'll be one mouth less to feed." "Your
daughter is going to hire out," said Theresa to her husband, when he
came home that evening.
Jason Philip had been playing cards that day, and had lost. He was in a
terrible humour: "She can go plumb to the Devil so far as I am
concerned." That was his comment.
The next morning Philippina sneaked up to the attic, and drew out her
cash from the hole in the chimney: it amounted to nine hundred and forty
marks, mostly in gold, which she had exchanged in the course of years
for small coins. Through the opening in the wall the June sun fell upon
her face, which, never young and bearing the stamp of extended crime,
looked like that of a witch.
She put the money in a woollen stocking, rolled it up in a knot, stuffed
it down her corset between her breasts, made the sign of the cross, and
repeated one of her drivelling formulas. Her clothes, ribbons, and other
possessions she had already packed in a basket. This she carried down
the stairs, and, without saying good-bye to a soul, left the house.
Her brother Markus was standing with sprawled legs in the sun before the
store, whistling. He caught sight of her with his one eye, smiled
contemptuously at her, and cried: "Happy journey!"
Philippina turned to him, and said: "You branded lout! You're going to
have a lousy time of it, mark what I tell you!"
In this frame of mind and body she came to Daniel, and said to him: "I
want to work for you. You don't need to pay nothing if you ain't got
it."
Daniel had been noticing for some time that Eleanore could not stand the
exertion required of her by the extra work.
"Will you mind the baby and sleep with it?" Daniel asked. Philippina
nodded and looked down.
"If you will take care of the child and act right toward it and me, I
shall be awfully grateful to you," he said, breathing more easily.
Thereupon Philippina threw her hands to her face, and shuddered from
head to foot. She was not exactly crying; there was something much
worse, much more despairing, in what she was doing than in mere crying.
She seemed to be convulsed by some demoniac power; a ghastly dream
seemed to have seized her in a moment of higher consciousness. She
turned around and trotted into the room where the child was playing with
a wooden horse.
She sat down on a foot-stool, and stared at the restless little
creature.
Daniel stopped, stood perfectly still, and looked at her in a mood of
solicitous reflection.
IV
During a rehearsal of "Traviata," Daniel flew into a rage at Fraeulein
Varini: "Listen, pay attention to your intonation, and keep in time.
It's enough to make a man lose his mind! What are you squeaking up at
the gallery for? You're supposed to be singing a song, and not whining
for a little bit of cheap applause."
The lady stepped out to the foot-lights with heaving bosom. Her offended
dignity created something like the spread tail of a peacock about her
hips: "How dare you?" she exclaimed: "I give you your choice: You can
apologise or leave this place. Whatever you do, you are going to become
acquainted with the power I have."
Daniel folded his arms, let his eyes roam over the members of the
orchestra, and said: "Good-bye, gentlemen. Since it is the director's
place to choose between me and this lady, there is no doubt whatever but
that my term of usefulness in this position is up. And moreover, in an
institution where meat is more valuable than music, I feel that I am
quite superfluous."
The other singers had come running out from the wings, and were
standing crowded together on the stage looking down at the orchestra.
When Daniel laid down his baton and walked away, every member of the
orchestra rose as one man to his feet. It was a voluntary and almost
overwhelming expression of speechless admiration. Though they had never
loved this man, though they had regarded him as an evil, alien kill-joy,
who interfered with their easy-going habits as musicians in that town,
they nevertheless respected his energy, admired the nobility of his
intentions, and at least had a vague idea of his genius.
Fraeulein Varini went into hysterics. The director was called in. He
promised Fraeulein Varini immediate redress, and wrote a letter to Daniel
requesting that he offer an apology.
Daniel replied in a brief note that he had no thought of changing his
plans as announced when he left the building. He remarked that it was
quite impossible for him to get along with Fraeulein Varini, that either
he or she would have to quit, and that since she intended to remain he
must consider his resignation as submitted and accepted.
That evening, as he was sitting at the table with Eleanore, he told her,
after a long silence and in very few words, what had happened. Her
response to him was a look of astonishment; that was all.
"Oh, it was the only thing I could do," said Daniel, without looking up
from his plate; "I was so heartily sick of the whole business."
"What are you going to live on, you and your child?" asked Eleanore.
His eye became even darker and harsher: "You know, God who makes the
lilies grow in the fields ... I can't quote that old proverb exactly, my
familiarity with the Bible is nothing to boast of."
That was all they said. The window was open; there was a mysterious
pulsing in the earth; the warm air had a disagreeable taste, somewhat
like that of sweet oil.
When the clock in the tower struck ten, Eleanore got up and said
good-night.
"Good-night!" replied Daniel, with bowed head.
V
That is the way it was now every evening between the two; for during the
day they scarcely saw each other.
Daniel would sit perfectly still for hours at a time and brood.
He could not forget. He could not forget the burning, smoking border of
the dress; nor the shoes that had some street mud on them; nor the face
with the pinched upper lip, the dishevelled hair, the nervously knitted
brow.
Under the linen in the clothes press he had found the silver buckle he
had given her. "Why did she hide it there?" he asked himself. The
condition of her soul when she opened the press and put the buckle in it
became vivid, real; it became blended with his own soul, a part of his
own being.
Then he discovered the harp without the strings. He took it to his room;
and when he looked at it, he had the feeling that he was looking at a
face without flesh.
"Am I too melancholy, too heavy for you?" This was the question that
came to him from the irrevocable past. And that other statement: "I will
be your mother made young again." And that other one, too: "I, too, am a
living creature."
He recalled some old letters she had written him and which he had
carefully preserved. He read them over with the care and caution he
would have exercised in studying an agreement, the disregard or
fulfilment of which was a matter of life and death. And there were bits
of old embroidery from her girlhood which he acquired in order to lock
them up and keep them as if they were sacred relics.
She stood out in his mind and his soul more vividly with each passing
hour. If he remembered how she sat and listened when he played or
discussed his works, he felt something clutching at his throat. He
recalled how she crept up to him once and pressed her forehead against
his lips: this picture was enshrouded in the awe of an unfathomable
mystery.
It was not a sense of guilt that bound him to his deceased wife. Nor was
it contrition or self-reproach or the longing that finds expression in
the realisation of accumulated neglect. His fancy warded off all thought
of death; in its creative defiance it invested the dead woman with a
reality she never possessed while making her pilgrimage in bodily form
over this earth.
It was not until now that she really took on form and shape for Daniel.
And this is the marvellous and the criminal feature of the musician.
Things and people are not his while they are his. He lives with shadows;
it is only what he has lost that is his in living form. Dissociated from
the moment, he reaches out for the moment that is gone; he longs for
yesterday and storms to-morrow with unassimilative impatience. What he
has in his hands is withered; what lies behind him is in flower. His
thinking is a winter between two springs: the true one that is gone, and
the one that is to come of which he dreams, but when it arrives he fails
to take it to himself. He does not see; he has seen. He does not love;
he has loved. He is not happy; he was happy. Dead, lifeless eyes open in
the grave; and the living eyes that look into the grave, see all things,
understand all things, and glorify all things, feel as if they are being
deceived by death and its duration throughout eternity.
Gertrude was transformed into a melody; everything she had done or said
was a melody. Her silence was awakened, her mute hours were made