The Goose Man
When Daniel took leave from her and boarded the train, she did not open
her mouth; she wrinkled her forehead, rubbed the ends of her fingers
against each other, stood perfectly quiet, and looked at the ground.
Long after the train had left the station, she was still to be seen
standing there in that unique position. A station official went up to
her, and, with poorly concealed ridicule at the rare phenomenon, asked
her what she was waiting for.
She turned her back on him, and started off. She came back by way of St.
James's Place, and talked for a quarter of an hour with her friend Frau
Hadebusch. It was Sunday. Benjamin Dorn was just coming home from
church. Seeing Philippina, he made a profound bow.
Frau Hadebusch slapped Philippina on the hip, and smiled at her
knowingly.
Herr Francke was no longer living at Frau Hadebusch's: he was in jail.
He had promised to marry the cook of a certain distinguished family; but
instead of hastening the coming of the happy day, he had gambled away
the savings of his bride-to-be.
II
Daniel had a letter of introduction to the Prior of the Monastery at
Loehriedt. He was looking for a manuscript that was supposed to have been
written by a contemporary of Orlando di Lasso, if not by Di Lasso
himself.
He remained for over two months, working at his collection. He found his
association with the monks quite agreeable, and they liked him. One of
them, who held him in especially high regard because of his ability as
an organist, gave him to understand that it was a matter of unaffected
regret to him that he could not greet him, Protestant that he was, with
the confidence that a man of his singular distinction deserved.
"So! I wish I were a Jew," said Daniel to him, "then you would have a
really unqualified opportunity to see what God can do without your
assistance."
The monk in question was called Father Leonhard; he was a short, wiry
fellow with black eyes and a dark complexion. He seemed to have had a
great deal of experience with the world, and to have no little cause for
contrition and repentance: there was nothing conventional about his
religious practices; they were, on the contrary, of almost redundant
fervour and renunciation. Daniel was impressed by the man's faith,
though his soul shuddered when in his presence: he regarded him as an
enemy, a Philistine, and preferred not to look at him at all.
He lived close by the monastery in the house of a railroad official.
Father Leonhard came in to visit him once. Daniel was sitting by the
window busily engaged in making some corrections. The Father looked
about the room: his eyes fell on a round, wooden box lying on a chair;
it looked like a cake box.
"The people at home have sent you something to nibble at," remarked the
Father, as Daniel got up.
Daniel riveted his eyes on the monk, took the box, hesitated for a
while, and then opened it. In it, carefully packed in sawdust, was the
mask of Zingarella. It was a part of Daniel's meagre luggage; wherever
he went it followed him.
Father Leonhard sprang back terrified. "What does that mean?" he asked.
"It means sin and purification," said Daniel, holding the mask up in the
light of the setting sun. "It means grief and redemption, despair and
mercy, love and death, chaos and form."
From that day on, Father Leonhard never said another word to Daniel
Nothafft. And whenever the strange musician chanced to play the organ,
the monk arose as quickly as possible, left the church, and sought out
some place where the tones could not reach him.
III
That summer Daniel came to Aix-la-Chapelle and the region of Liege,
Louvain, and Malines. From there he wandered on foot to Ghent and
Bruges.
In places where he had to make investigations, he was obliged to depend
upon the letters he received from his publisher to make himself
understood. Condemned to silence, he lived very much alone; he was a
stranger in a strange land.
He had no interest in sights. It was rare that he looked at old
paintings. The beautiful never caused him to stop unless it actually
blocked his way. He went about as if in between two walls. He followed
his nose, turned around only with the greatest reluctance, and never
felt tired until he was ready to lie down to sleep.
And even when he was tired the feeling that he was being robbed of
something gnawed at his soul; he was restless even when he slept. Haste
coloured his eye, fashioned his step, and moulded his deeds. He ate his
meals in haste, wrote his letters in haste, and talked in haste.
It pained him to feel that men were looking at him. Although he
invariably sought out the most deserted corner of whatever inn he
chanced to stop at, and thereby avoided becoming, so far as he might,
the target of the curious, he was nevertheless gaped at, watched, and
studied wherever he went. For everything about him was conspicuous: the
energy of his gestures, the agility of his mimicry, the way he showed
his teeth, and the nervous, hacking step with which he moved through
groups of gossiping people.
He had anticipated with rare pleasure the sight of the sea. He was
prepared to behold the monstrous, titanic, seething, and surging
element, the tempest of the Apocalypse. He was disappointed by the
peaceful rise and fall of the tide, the harmless rolling back and forth
of the waves. He concluded that it were better for one not to become
acquainted with things that had inspired one's fancy with reverential
awe.
He could quarrel with nature just as he could quarrel with men. The
phases of nature which he regarded as her imperfections excited his
anger. He was fond, however, of a certain spot in the forest; or he
liked a tree in the plain, or sunset along the canal.
He liked best of all the narrow streets of the cities, when the gentle
murmurings of song wafted forth from the open windows, or when the light
from the lamp shone forth from the windows after they had been closed.
He loved to pass by courts and cellars, gates and fences; when the face
of an old man, or that of a young girl, came suddenly to view, when
workmen went home from the factories, or soldiers from the barracks, or
seamen from the harbours, he saw a story in each of them; he felt as one
feels on reading an exciting book.
One day when he was in Cleve he walked the streets at night all alone.
He noticed a man and a woman and five children, all poorly dressed,
standing near a church. Lying before them on the pavement were several
bundles containing their earthly possessions. A man came up after a
while and addressed them in a stern, domineering tone; they picked up
their bundles and followed him: it was a mournful procession. They were
emigrants; the man had told them about their ship.
Daniel felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were
vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as
they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical,
musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been
dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went
on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He
no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.
After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more
began to blow in his soul.
But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His
immediate goal was the cloister of Oesede at Osnabrueck, and from there he
wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway
carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went
from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack
strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from
eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the
mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were
wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked,
sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in
himself.
When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and
more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were
black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog
and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles
blew--it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and
accursed star.
One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something
to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to
stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the
fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance
of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light
of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many
demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse
could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man
flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal
size; the "gee" and "haw" of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a
spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of
tormented creatures.
Daniel had found what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful
melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be
sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without
consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.
Now it had arisen, and its soul--its consequence--had arisen with it; it
was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and
filled as the world is full.
Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of
machinery.
IV
Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the
museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a
mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a
cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house
in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.
Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he
become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary
nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits
without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and
editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a
nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip
had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on
approval; he was placed on the black list.
He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that
the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects
of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.
But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent;
in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought
his stock and furnishings at brokers' prices, and the firm of Jason
Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.
In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted
of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von
Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending
upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock
together.
Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he
tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to
understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his
convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.