The Goose Man
shoulders: "It all reminds me of a good warm bed."
Eberhard stared at the locomotive of the in-coming train. "Plebeian," he
thought, with inner contempt.
Nevertheless he joined this same plebeian in the third-class carriage,
though he had bought a ticket for first class. Was it the white silk
kerchief that so suddenly attracted him to the plebeian? What else could
it have been? For during the entire journey they sat opposite each other
in absolute silence. It was a remarkable pair: the one in a shabby, wet
suit with a hat that looked partly as though it belonged to a cheap sign
painter, and partly as though it were the sole head gear of a gypsy
bard, and with a big pair of spectacles from which the eyes flashed
green and unsteady; the other looking as though he had just stepped out
of a bandbox, not a particle of dust on his clothing, in patent
leather slippers, English straw hat, and with an American cigarette in
his mouth.
Next to them sat a peasant woman with a chicken basket on her lap, a
red-headed girl who held the hind part of pig on her knees, and a
workman whose face was bandaged.
At times they looked at each other. If they chanced to catch each
other's eye, the Baron would at once look down, and Daniel, bored as he
was, would gaze out of the window at the rain. But there must have been
something unusually communicative and mutually intelligent in the few
glances with which they involuntarily honoured each other during the
journey; for when the train pulled into the station, they left together,
and walked along the street quite peacefully, side by side, just as if
it were to be taken as a matter of fact that they would remain in each
other's company.
Man is a gregarious animal; given the right conditions, one man will
seek out the company of another. Neither defiance nor reserve is of the
slightest avail; there is something that conquers the strongest man when
he finds another who will yield. Then it is that what was formerly
regarded as contentment with loneliness is unmasked and shown to be
nothing more than ordinary self-deception.
"I presume you wish to go home and change your clothes," said Eberhard,
standing on the street corner.
"I am already dry," said Daniel, "and I really have no desire to go
home. Over there on Schuett Island is a little inn called the Peter
Vischer. I like it because it is frequented only by old people who talk
about old times, and because it is situated on a bridge, so that you
have the feeling you are in a ship floating around on the water."
Eberhard went along. From eight o'clock till midnight they sat there
opposite each other. Their conversation was limited to such remarks as,
"It is really quite comfortable here."--"It seems to have stopped
raining."--"Yes, it has stopped."--"That old white-bearded man over by
the stove who is doing so much talking is a watchmaker from Unschlitt
Place."--"So? He looks pretty husky."--"He is said to have fought in the
battle of Woerth."--And so their remarks ran.
When they separated, Eberhard knew that Daniel would again be at the
Peter Vischer on Wednesday of the following week, and Daniel knew that
he would find the Baron there.
X
Philippina was on her knees by the hearth, cleaning out the ashes;
Eleanore was sitting by the kitchen table, adding up the week's expenses
in a narrow note-book.
"You ought-a git married, Eleanore," said Philippina, as she blew on a
hot coal, "'deed you ought; it's the right time for you."
"Ah, leave me alone," said Eleanore angrily.
Philippina crouched still lower on the hearth: "I mean well by you, I
do," she said. "You're simply killing yourself here. With your white
skin and sugary eyes--uhm, uhm! You bet if I had 'em like yours I'd git
one. Men are all as dumb as shoats outside of a sty."
"Keep quiet," said Eleanore, and went on counting: "Seven from fifteen
leaves eight...."
"An angel has made your bed," interrupted Philippina with a giggle. "I
know a fellow," she went on, her face becoming rather sour, "he's just
the right one. Money? whew! He's stuck on you too, believe me! If I wuz
to go to him and say, Eleanore Jordan is willing, I believe the old
codger would give me a bag of gold. Cross my heart, Eleanore, and he's a
fine man too. He can play the piano just as good as Daniel, if not
better. When he plays you can see the sparks fly."
Eleanore got up, and closed the book. "Do you want me to give you a
present for finding me a man, Philippina?" she asked, with a sympathetic
smile. "And you are trying to sound me? Go on, you fool."
"Come wind and blow my fire hot, so that my soup be not forgot,"
whispered Philippina with a gloomy face.
Eleanore left the kitchen and went upstairs. Her heart was full of
longing; it was in truth almost bursting with longing.
XI
It was at the beginning of October that Daniel for the first time
visited Eberhard in his doll house up by the castle.
They had met each other in the Peter Vischer on the evening agreed upon,
but there was a special party there that evening, a sort of a clam-bake;
the place was crowded; the noise was disagreeable, so that they left
much earlier than they had intended.
They walked along in silence until they reached the Town Hall, when
Eberhard said: "Won't you come up and sit awhile with me?" Daniel
nodded.
Eberhard lighted the six candles of a chandelier in his diminutive room.
Seeing that Daniel was surprised, he said: "There is nothing I hate
worse than gas or oil. That is light; gas and oil merely give off
illuminated stench."
For a while there was complete silence in the room; Daniel had stretched
out on the sofa.
"Illuminated stench," he repeated with a smile of satisfaction. "That is
not bad; it is the new age in which we are living. I believe they call
it _fin de siecle_. The day when things flourish is gone; everything has
to be manufactured now. Men have become Americans, gruesomely sobered by
the intoxication of doing a big business; women have lost their nicety
of instinct; the cities have become colossal steam engines; everybody,
young and old, is on his belly adoring the so-called wonders of science,
just as if it really meant anything to humanity that a loafer in Paris
can sip his morning coffee and crunch his rolls while reading that the
Pope spent a restful night, or that a gun has been invented which will
send a bullet through fourteen people one after another, whereas the
best record up to the present had been only seven to a shot. Who can
create anything, who can draw anything from his soul under such
conditions? It is madness, it is immoral discipline."
"Oh, I don't know; I think a man can draw something from within his
soul," said the Baron, in whose face a bored, peeved expression gave way
to one of suspense. "It is possible, for example, to conjure the
invisible spirit into visibility."
Daniel, who had not yet suspected that the Baron was, in a way, speaking
from another country and in a strange tongue, continued: "The whole
supply of interest and enthusiasm at the disposal of the nation has been
used up. The venerable creations of days gone by still have nominal
value; that is, they are still gaped at and praised, but creative,
reproductive, and moulding power they no longer have. Otherwise
hocus-pocus alone prospers, and he who does forgive it is not forgiven.
But life is short; I feel it every day; and if you do not attend to the
plant, it soon withers and dies."
"It is not only hocus-pocus," replied Eberhard, who was now completely
transformed, though he did not grasp the painful indignation of the
musician. "You see, I have associated but very little with men. My
refuge has been the realm of departed and invisible spirits who take on
visible form only when a believing soul makes an unaffected appeal to
them. It was my task to de-sensualise and de-materialise myself; then
the spirits took on shape and form."
Daniel straightened up, and saw how pale the Baron had become. It seemed
to him that they were both quite close together, and at the same time
poles removed from each other. He could not refrain however from taking
up the thread of his thought. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed with the same
short, jerky laugh that accompanied the beginning of the conversation,
"my little spirits also demand faith, credulity, and whine and cry for
form and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron."
"And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your
spirits?" asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.
"Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my
case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour
my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and
blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They
are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed
to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with
indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I
am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am
supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am
supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is
something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of
one's steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my
little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid
them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is
possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an
honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have
nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in
pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and
scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because
two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am
nothing if I don't have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress
if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace
and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom
Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the
name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me
laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don't give a damn for
all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as
this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is
torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This
digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life
into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness
that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table,
there are the wax candles, and over there sits a man; and when I have
stopped talking everything is different, everything is as if a year had
passed by, and everything is irrevocable. Show me a way to humanity, to
men, and then I will believe in God."
The Baron's head swam; his brain felt close; it seemed to be sultry,
stuffy in his skull. He could not help but think of certain exciting
meetings where the people had sat in the dark in trembling expectancy
and then suddenly heard a voice from beyond the tomb at the sound of
which the marrow froze in their bones. He hardly dared look at the place
where Daniel was sitting. The words of the musician caused him infinite
pain: there lay in them a greediness, a shamelessness, and a
gruesomeness that filled him with terror.
He could almost have asked: And Eleanore? And Eleanore?
But however much he felt repelled, owing to his training, association,