The Goose Man
Prudentia. If I were to recommend you to Herr Zittel it certainly would
not be in vain. Herr Zittel is head of the clerical department. I also
stand in with Herr Diruf, and he is general agent. I come in contact
nearly every day with Inspector Jordan, and Herr Jordan is a man of
exceptional culture. His daughter Gertrude attended my Sunday-school
class. She has received and still enjoys divine favour. If you were to
entrust your case to me, you would be entering upon a righteous,
wholesome career. I am always looking out for some one. To tell the
truth, and not wishing to appear immodest, I was born that way."
The man looked like a patchwork of qualmishness, tribulation, and
unctuous piety, and his coat collar was badly frayed.
"That's all right," replied Daniel; "don't you see that I am getting
along quite well?"
The pious life-insurance agent sighed and brushed a drop from the tip of
his nose with the back of his hand. "My dear Sir," said he, "take to
heart the words of Solomon: Pride goeth before a fall, but the humble in
spirit obtain honour."
"Yes, I'll take that to heart," said Daniel drily, and bent still lower
over the score on which he was working.
Benjamin Dorn sighed again, and limped out of the room. With his thumbs
pointing straight to high heaven above, he said to Frau Hadebusch: "You
know, Frau Hadebusch, I simply can't help it. I must lighten my heart in
a Christian way. What do you think?"
"Good heavens, what's he doing? What's he up to now?" sighed the old
lady, as she shoved her broom under her arm.
"As true as I stand here, the table is all covered with papers, and the
papers are all covered with some kind of mysterious signs."
Alarmed at the very thought of having a lodger up in the attic who was
practising black magic, Frau Hadebusch sent her husband down to the
district policeman. This enlightened official declared that the
brush-maker was a gossip. Vexed at this unanticipated description of
himself, the brush-maker went straightway to the inn at the sign of the
Horse and got drunk, so drunk that Benjamin Dorn had to take him home.
It was a beautiful moonlit night.
IV
Not far from Hadebusch's was a little cafe known as The Paradise.
Everything in it was diminutive, the proprietor, the waitress, the
tables, the chairs and the portions. There the brethren from the Vale
of Tears assembled to drag the gods down into the dust and destroy the
universe in general.
Daniel wended his way thither. He knew the liliputian room and the
starved faces. He was personally acquainted with the painter who never
painted, the writer who never wrote, the student who never studied, and
the inventor who never invented anything. He knew all about the sculptor
who squandered such talents as he may have had in tinkering with plaster
casts, the actor who had been on a leave of absence for years, and the
half dozen mendicant Philistines who came here day after day to have a
good time in their own repelling fashion. He knew the young Baron von
Auffenberg who had broken with his family for reasons that were clear to
no one but himself. He knew Herr Carovius, who invariably played the
role of the observer, and who sat there in a sort of mysterious fashion,
smiling to himself a smile of languishing irony, and stroking his hand
over his long hair, which was cut straight across at the back of his
neck.
He knew, ah, he knew by heart, the grease spots on the walls that had
been rubbed in by the heads of the habitues, the indelible splotches on
the tables, the hartshorn buttons on the proprietor's vest, and the
smoke-coloured curtains draped about the tiny windows. The loud,
boisterous talking, the daily repetition of the same hackneyed remarks,
the anarchistic swashbuckling of the painter whom his comrades had
dubbed Kropotkin--all of these were familiar stories to him. He knew the
philosophic cynicism of the student who felt that he was the Socrates of
the nineteenth century, and who looked back on twenty-five wasted
semesters as on so many battles fought and won.
The most interesting personage was Herr Carovius. He was a well-read
man. That he knew a great deal about music was plain from many of his
chance remarks. He was a brother-in-law of Andreas Doederlein, though he
seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one
mentioned Doederlein's name in his presence, he screwed up his face, and
began to shuffle about uneasily on his chair. He was an unfathomable,
impenetrable personality. Even if his years--he was forty-five--had not
won for him a measure of esteem, the malicious and mordant scorn he
heaped on his fellow-men would have done so. People said he had a good
deal of money. If this was brought to his attention, he employed the
most ghastly oaths in asserting his poverty. But since he had neither
calling nor profession and spent his days in unqualified idleness, it
was apparent that his assertions on this point were wholly unfounded,
and this despite the virility of his unconventional language.
"Say, tell me, who is that lanky quack there?" asked Herr Carovius,
pointing to Daniel and looking at Schwalbe the sculptor. He had known
Daniel for a long while, but every now and then it gave him a peculiar
kind of pleasure to play the role of the newcomer.
The sculptor looked at him indignantly.
"That is a man who still has faith in himself," he remarked rather
morosely. "He is a man who has bathed in the dragon blood of illusions,
and has become as invulnerable as Young Siegfried. He is convinced that
the people who sleep in the houses around this part of town dream of his
future greatness, and have already placed an order with the green-grocer
for his laurel wreath. He has not the faintest idea that the only thing
that is sacred to them is their midday meal, that they are ready to
drink their beer at the first stroke of the gong, and to yawn when the
light appears on Mount Sinai. He is completely taken up with himself; he
is sufficient unto himself; and he gathers honey. The bee will have its
honey, and if it is unable to get it from the flowers, it buzzes about
the dung heap. As is evidently the case here. _Prosit_ Nothafft," he
said in conclusion, and lifted his glass to Daniel.
Herr Carovius smiled in his usual languishing fashion. "Nothafft," he
bleated, "Nothafft, Nothafft, that is a fine name, but not exactly one
that is predestined to a niche in Walhalla. It strikes me as being
rather more appropriate for the sign of a tailor. Good Lord! The bones
the young people gnaw at to-day were covered with meat in my time."
And then, clasping his glasses a bit firmer onto his nose, he riveted
his blinking, squinting eyes on the door. Eberhard von Auffenberg,
elegant, slender, and disgruntled, entered to find life where others
were throwing it away.
It was far into the night when the brethren went home. As they passed
along through the streets they bellowed their nocturnal serenades at the
windows of the otherwise peaceful houses.
As the hilarious laughter and vocal rowdyism reached Daniel's ear, he
detected from out of the hubbub a gentle voice in E-flat minor,
accompanied by the inexorable eighth-notes sung with impressive vigour.
Then the voice died away in a solemn E-flat major chord, and everything
was as if sunk in the bottom of the sea.
V
Toward the end of the summer, Philippina, Jason Philip's daughter, shot
out the eye of her seven-year-old brother with a so-called bean-shooter.
The children were playing in the yard. Willibald, the older boy, wanted
the shooter. Philippina, who had not the slightest sense of humour,
snatched it from his hands, placed the stone on the elastic band and let
it fly with all her might. Little Marcus ran in front of it. It was all
over in a jiffy. A heart-rending scream caused the frightened mother to
leave the shop and run out into the yard. She found the child lying on
the ground convulsed with pain. While Theresa carried the boy into the
house, Jason Philip ran for the doctor. But it was too late; the eye was
lost.
Philippina hid. After considerable search her father found her under the
cellar steps. He beat her so mercilessly that the neighbours had to come
up and take him away.
Little Marcus was Theresa's favourite child. She could not get over the
accident. The obsession that had slumbered in her soul for years now
became more persistent than ever: she began to brood over guilt in
general and this case in particular.
At times she would get up in the night, light a candle, and walk about
the house in her stocking feet. She would look behind the stove and
under the table, and then crouch down with her ear against the maid's
door. She would examine the mouse-trap and if a mouse had been caught in
it, she could not, try as she might, completely detach her own unrest
from the mental disturbance of the little beast.
One day Jason Philip was stopped on the street by a well-known
cabinet-maker and asked whether he had any old furniture for sale. Jason
Philip replied that he was not at all familiar with the contents of the
attic and sent him to Theresa. Theresa recalled that there was an old
desk up in the attic that had been standing there for years. She
suggested that they might be willing to dispose of this for a few taler,
and accompanied the man to the room where the worn-out furniture was
stored.
She opened the little wooden door. The cabinet-maker caught sight at
once of the desk. It had only three legs and was just about ready to
fall to pieces. "I can't make you an offer for that," said the
cabinet-maker, and began to rap on it here and there, somewhat as a
physician might sound a corpse. "The most I can offer you is twelve
groschen."
They haggled for a while, and finally agreed on sixteen. The man left at
once, having promised to send one of his men up in the afternoon to get
the desk. Theresa was already standing on the steps, when it occurred to
her that it might be well to go through the drawers before letting the
thing get out of the house: there might be some old documents in them.
She went back up in the attic.
In the dust of one of the drawers she found, sure enough, a bundle of
papers, and among them the receipt which Gottfried Nothafft had sent
back to Jason Philip ten years before. She read in the indistinct light
the confidential words of the deceased. She saw that Jason Philip had
received three thousand taler.
After she had read this, she crumpled up the paper. Then she put it into
her apron pocket and screamed out: "Be gone, Gottfried, be gone!"
She went down stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the
table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely
absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in
that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her
behaviour that she made the sign of the cross.
VI
When the midday meal was over, the children left the table and prepared
to go to school. Jason Philip lighted a cigar, and took the newspaper
from his pocket.
"Did you find anything for the second-hand furniture man?" he asked, as
he puffed away.
"I found something for him and something for myself," she said.
"What do you mean? You found something for yourself?"
"What do I mean? I mean just what I said. I have always known that there
was something crooked about that money."
"What money are you talking about? Listen, don't speak to me in riddles!
When you have anything to say to me, say it. Do you understand?"
"I mean Gottfried Nothafft's money, Jason Philip," said Theresa, almost
in a whisper.
Jason Philip bent over the table. "Then you have at last found the old