The Goose Man
on another occasion she had gone with an officer to the barracks at
night simply on a wager. She told of all the fine-looking men who ran
after her, and how she dropped them whenever she felt like it. She said
she would let them kiss her sometimes, but that was all; or she would
walk arm in arm with them through the forest, but that was all. She
commented on the fact that in Munich you had to keep an eye out for the
police and observe their hours, otherwise there might be trouble. For
example, a swarthy Italian kept following her once--he was a regular
Conte--and she couldn't make the man go on about his business, and you
know he rushed into her room and held a revolver before her face, and
she screamed, of course she did, until the whole house was awake, and
there was an awful excitement.
When Daniel endeavoured to put a stop to her wastefulness, she went to
Philippina and complained. Philippina encouraged her. "Don't you let him
get away with anything," said she, "let him feel that a woman with your
beauty didn't have to marry a skinflint."
When she began to go with Edmund Hahn, she told Philippina all about it.
"You ought to see him, Philippina," she whispered in a mysterious way.
"He is a regular Don Juan; he can turn the head of any woman." She said
he had been madly in love with her for two years, and now he was going
to gamble for her; but in a very aristocratic and exclusive club, to
which none but the nicest people belonged. "If I win, Philippina, I am
going to make you a lovely present," she said.
From then on her conversation became rather tangled and incoherent. She
was out a great deal, and when she returned she was always in a rather
uncertain condition. She had Philippina put up her hair, and every word
she spoke during the operation was a lie. One time she confessed that
she had not been in the theatre, as Daniel had supposed, but at the
house of a certain Frau Baeumler, a good friend of Edmund Hahn. They had
been gambling: she had won sixty marks. She looked at the door as if in
fear, took out her purse, and showed Philippina three gold pieces.
Philippina had to swear that she would not give Dorothea away. A few
days later Dorothea got into another party and got out of it
successfully, and Philippina had to renew her oath. The old maid could
take an oath with an ease and glibness such as she might have displayed
in saying good morning. In the bottom of her heart she never failed to
grant herself absolution for the perjury she was committing. For the
time being she wished to collect, take notes, follow the game wherever
it went. Moreover, it tickled and satisfied her senses to think about
relations and situations which she knew full well she could never
herself experience.
Dorothea became more and more ensnared. Her eyes looked like
will-o'-the-wisps, her laugh was jerky and convulsive. She never had
time, either for her husband or her child. She would receive letters
occasionally that she would read with greedy haste and then tear into
shreds. Philippina came into her room once quite suddenly; Dorothea,
terrified, hid a photograph she had been holding in her hand. When
Philippina became indignant at the secrecy of her action, she said with
an air of inoffensive superiority: "You would not understand it,
Philippina. That is something I cannot discuss with any one."
But Philippina's vexation worried her: she showed her the photograph.
It was the picture of a young man with a cold, crusty face. Dorothea
said it was an American whom she had met at Frau Baeumler's. He was said
to be very rich and alone.
Every evening Philippina wanted to know something about the American.
"Tell me about the American," she would say.
One evening, quite late, Dorothea came into Philippina's room with
nothing on but her night-gown. Agnes and little Gottfried were asleep.
"The American has a box at the theatre to-morrow evening. If you call
for me you can see him," she whispered.
"I am bursting with curiosity," replied Philippina.
For a while Dorothea sat in perfect silence, and then exclaimed: "If I
only had money, Philippin', if I only had money!"
"I thought the American had piles of it," replied Philippina.
"Of course he has money, lots of it," said Dorothea, and her eyes
flashed, "but--"
"But? What do you mean?"
"Do you think men do things without being compensated?"
"Oh, that's it," said Philippina reflectively, "that's it." She crouched
on a hassock at Dorothea's feet. "How pretty you are, how sweet," she
said in her bass voice: "God, what pretty little feet you have! And what
smooth white skin! Marble's got nothing on you." And with the carnal
concupiscence of a faun in woman's form she took Dorothea's leg in her
hand and stroked the skin as far as the knee.
Dorothea shuddered. As she looked down at the cowering Philippina, she
noticed that there was a button missing on her blouse. Through the
opening, just between her breasts, she saw something brown. "What is
that on your body there?" asked Dorothea.
Philippina blushed. "Nothing for you," she replied in a rough tone, and
held her hand over the opening in her blouse.
"Tell me, Philippina, tell me," begged Dorothea, who could not stand the
thought of any one keeping a secret from her: "Possibly it is your
dowry. Possibly you have made a savings bank out of your bosom?" She
laughed lustily.
Philippina got up: "Yes, it is my money," she confessed with reluctance,
and looked at Dorothea hostilely.
"It must be a whole lot. Look out, or some one will steal it from you.
You will have to sleep on your stomach."
Daniel came down from his study, and heard Dorothea laughing. Grief was
gnawing at his heart; he passed hastily by the door.
XI
One evening, as Philippina came into the hall from the street, she saw a
man coming up to her in the dark; he called her by name. She thought she
recognised his voice, and on looking at him more closely saw that it was
her father.
She had not spoken to him for ten years. She had seen him from time to
time at a distance, but she had always made it a point to be going in
another direction as soon as she saw him; she avoided him, absolutely.
"What's the news?" she asked in a friendly tone.
Jason Philip cleared his throat, and tried to get out of the light in
the hall and back into the shadow: he wished to conceal his shabby
clothes from his daughter.
"Now, listen," he began with affected naturalness, "you might inquire
about your parents once in a while. The few steps over to our house
wouldn't make you break your legs. Honour thy father and thy mother, you
know. Your mother deserves any kindness you can show her. As for me,
well, I have dressed you down at times, but only when you needed it. You
were a mischievous monkey, and you know it."
He laughed; but there was the fire of fear in his eyes. Philippina was
the embodiment of silence.
"As I was saying," Jason Philip continued hastily, as if to prevent any
inimical memories of his daughter from coming to his mind, "you might
pay a little attention to your parents once in a while: Can't you lend
me ten marks? I have got to meet a bill to-morrow morning, and I haven't
got a pfennig. The boys, you know, I mean your brothers, are conducting
themselves splendidly. They give me something the first of each month,
and they do it regularly. But I don't like to go to them about this
piddling business to-morrow. I thought that as you were right here in
the neighbourhood, I could come over and see you about it."
Jason Philip was lying. His sons gave him no help whatsoever. Willibald
was living in Breslau, where he had a poorly paid position as a
bookkeeper and was just barely making ends meet. Markus was good for
nothing, and head over heels in debt.
Philippina thought the matter over for a moment, and then told her
father to wait. She went upstairs. Jason Philip waited at the door,
whistling softly. Many years had passed by since he first attacked the
civil powers, urged on by a rebellion of noble thoughts in his soul.
Many years had passed by since he had made his peace with these same
civil powers. Nevertheless, he continued to whistle the "Marseillaise."
Philippina came waddling down the steps, dragged herself over to the
door, and gave her father a five-mark piece. "There," she bellowed, "I
haven't any more myself."
But Jason Philip was satisfied with half the amount he had asked for. He
was now equipped for an onslaught on the nearest cafe with its corned
beef, sausages, and new beer.
From this time on he came around to the house on AEgydius Place quite
frequently. He would stand in the hall, look around for Philippina, and
if he found her, beg her for money. The amounts Philippina gave him
became smaller and smaller. Finally she took to giving him ten pfennigs
when he came.
XII
It frequently happened that Daniel would not answer when any one asked
him a question. His ear lost the words, his eye the pictures, signs,
faces, gestures. He was in his own way; he was a torment to himself.
Something drew him there and then here. He would leave the house, and
then be taken with a longing to return. He noticed that people were
laughing at him; laughing at him behind his back. He read mockery in the
eyes of his pupils; the maids in the house tittered when he passed by.
What did they know? What were they concealing? Perhaps his soul could
have told what they knew and what they concealed; but he was unwilling
to drag it all out into the realm of known, nameable things.
As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him,
leave him in peace, his despair increased. "What have you done, Daniel!"
a voice within him cried, "what have you done!" The shades of the
sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.
The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be
rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed,
had suddenly died away.
For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of
mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his
presentient soul into peace.
The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked
at him.
Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore's room. Old
Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so
as not to disturb him.
One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea's
room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him,
became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.
He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his
two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and
looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at
the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched
constantly.
"This can't keep up, Dorothea," he said in a kindly tone, "you are
ruining your own life and mine too. Why do you have all these people
around you? Is the pleasure you derive from associating with them so
great that it benumbs your conscience? I have no idea what you are
doing. Tell me about it. The household affairs are in a wretched
condition; everything is in disorder. And that cigar smoke out in the
living room! I opened a window. And your child! It has no mother. Look
at its little face, and see how pale and sickly it looks!"
"Well, I can't help it; Philippina puts poppy in the milk so that it
will sleep longer," Dorothea answered, after the fashion of guilty
women: of the various reproaches Daniel had cast at her, she seized upon
the one of which she felt the least guilty. But after this, Daniel had
no more to say.