The Goose Man
"I am so tired and sleepy," said Dorothea, and again blinked at him out
of one corner of her eye with that mocking, sensual look. As he showed
no inclination to leave, she yawned, and continued in an angry tone:
"Why do you wake a person up in the middle of the night, if all you want
is to scold them? Get out of here, you loathsome thing!"
She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite
her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was
pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled.
Daniel, who had been so cruel to noble women now become shades, saw how
she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such
child-like vanity.
"There is a Chinese fairy tale about a Princess," he said, and bent down
over Dorothea, "who received from her mother as a wedding present a set
of jewel boxes. There was a costly present in each box, but the last,
smallest, innermost one was locked, and the Princess had to promise
that she would never open it. She kept her promise for a while, but
curiosity at last got the better of her, she forgot her vow, and opened
the last little box by force. There was a mirror in it; and when she
looked into it and saw how beautiful she was, she began to abuse her
husband. She tortured him so that he killed her one day."
Dorothea looked at him terrified. Then she laughed and said: "What a
stupid story! Such a tale of horror!" She laid her cheek on the pillow,
and again looked in the mirror.
The following morning Daniel received an anonymous letter. It read as
follows: "You will be guarding your own honour if you keep a sharp
lookout on your wife. A Well-wisher."
A cold fever came over him. For a few days he dragged his body from room
to room as if poisoned. He avoided every one in the house. One night he
again felt a desire to go down to Dorothea. When he reached the door to
her room, he found it bolted. He knocked, but received no answer. He
knocked again, this time more vigorously. He heard her turn her head on
the pillow. "Let me sleep!" cried Dorothea angrily.
"Open the door, Dorothea," he begged.
"No, I will not; I want to sleep." These were the words that reached his
ear from behind the bolted door.
He pressed three or four times on the latch, implored her three or four
times to let him come in, but received no answer. He did not wish to
make any more noise, looked straight ahead as if into a dark hole, and
then turned and went back to his room in the attic.
XIII
Friedrich Benda was again in Europe. All the newspapers contained
accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab
dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an
interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes
of imminent death, back to the Nile. In England he was celebrated as a
hero and a bold pioneer; the Royal Geographical Society had made him an
honorary member; and the incidents of his journey were the talk of the
day.
Toward the close of April he came to Nuremberg to visit his mother. The
blind old woman had been carefully and cautiously prepared for his
coming. She nevertheless came very near dying with joy; her life was in
grave danger for a while.
Benda had not wished to stay more than a week: his business and his
work called him back to London; he had lectures to deliver, and he had
to see a book through the press, a book in which he had given a
description of the years spent in Africa.
At the urgent request of his mother he had decided to stay longer.
Moreover, during the first days of his visit to Nuremberg, he suffered
from a severe attack of a fever he had brought with him from the
tropics, and this forced him to remain in bed. The news of his presence
in the city finally became generally known, and he was annoyed by the
curiosity of many people who had formerly never concerned themselves
about him in the slightest.
He was eager to see Daniel; every hour of delay in meeting his old
friend was an hour of reproach. But his mother insisted that he stay
with her; he had to sit near her and tell of his experiences in Africa.
When he heard of the outer events in Daniel's life he was filled with
terror. The fact that made the profoundest impression on him was
Daniel's marriage to Dorothea Doederlein. People told him a great many
things about their life and how they were getting along, and with each
passing day he felt that it would be more difficult to go to Daniel. One
evening he got his courage together and decided to go. He got as far as
AEgydius Place, when he was seized with such a feeling of sadness and
discomfort at the thought of all the changes that time and fate had made
that he turned back. He felt as if he might be deceived by a picture
which would perhaps still show the features of Daniel as he looked in
former years, but that he would be so changed inwardly that words would
be unable to bring the two together.
He longed to talk with some one who loved Daniel and who had followed
his career with pure motives. He had to think for a long while: where
was there such a person? He thought of old Herold and went to him. He
directed the conversation without digression to a point that was of
prime importance to him. And in order to put the old man in as
confidential a frame of mind as possible, he reminded him of a night
when the three of them, Daniel, Herold, and Benda, had sat in the Mohren
Cellar drinking wine and discussing things in general, important and
unimportant, that have a direct bearing on life.
The old man nodded; he recalled the evening. He spoke of Daniel's genius
with a modesty and a deference that made Benda's heart swell. He raised
his finger, and said with a fine fire in his eye: "I'll stand good for
him. I prophesy on the word of the Bible: A star will rise from Jacob."
Then he spoke of Eleanore; he was passionately fond of her. He told how
she had brought him the quartette, and how she had glowed with
inspiration and the desire to help. He also had a good deal to say about
Gertrude, especially with regard to her mental breakdown and her death.
Benda left the old man at once quiet and disquieted. He walked along the
street for a long while, rapt in thought. When he looked up he saw that
he was standing before Daniel's house. He went in.
XIV
Daniel knew that Benda had returned: Philippina had read it in the
newspaper and told him about it. Dorothea, who had learned of his return
from her father, had also spoken to him about it. He had also heard
other people speak of it.
The first time he heard it he was startled. He felt he would have to
flee to his friend of former days. Then he was seized with the same fear
that had come over Benda: Is our relation to each other the same? The
thought of meeting Benda filled him with a sense of shame, to which was
added a touch of bitterness as day after day passed by and Benda never
called or wrote. "It is all over," he thought, "he has forgotten me." He
would have liked to forget too; and he could have done it, for his mind
was wandering, restless, strayed.
One evening as he crossed the square he noticed that the windows of his
house were all brilliantly lighted. He went to the kitchen, where he
found Agnes at the table seeding plums.
"Who is here again?" he asked. One could hear laughter, loud and
boisterous, in the living room.
Agnes, scarcely looking up, reeled off the names: Councillor Finkeldey,
Herr von Ginsterberg, Herr Samuelsky, Herr Hahn, a strange man whose
name she did not know, Frau Feistelmann and her sister.
Daniel remained silent for a while. Then he went up to Agnes, put his
hand under her chin, lifted her head, and murmured: "And you? And you?"
Agnes frowned, and was afraid to look into his face. Suddenly she said:
"To-day is the anniversary of mother's death." With that she looked at
him fixedly.
"So?" said Daniel, sat down on the edge of the table, and laid his head
in his hand. Some one was playing the piano in the living room. Since
Daniel had taken the grand piano up to his room, Dorothea had rented a
small one. The rhythmical movement of dancing couples could be heard
quite distinctly.
"I'd like to leave this place," said Agnes, as she threw a worm-eaten
plum in the garbage can. "In Beckschlager Street there is a seamstress
who wants to teach me to sew."
"Why don't you go?" asked Daniel. "It would be a very sensible thing to
do. But what will Philippina say about it?"
"Oh, she doesn't object, provided I spend my evenings and Sundays with
her."
The front door bell rang, and Agnes went out: there was some one to see
Daniel. He hesitated, started toward the door, shook and stepped back,
seized with trembling hand the kitchen lamp in order to make certain
that he was not mistaken, for it was dark, but there could be no
mistake. It was Benda.
They looked at each other in violent agitation. Benda was the first to
reach out his hand; then Daniel reached out his. Something seemed to
snap within him. He became dizzy, his tall, stiff body swung back and
forth. Then he fell into the arms of his friend, whom he had lived
without for seventeen years.
Benda was not prepared for such a scene; he was unable to speak. Then
Daniel tore himself loose from the embrace of his old comrade, pushed
the dishevelled hair back from his forehead, and said hastily: "Come
upstairs with me; no one will disturb us up there."
Daniel lighted the lamp in his room, and then looked around to see
whether old Jordan was at home. Jordan's room was dark. He closed the
door and took a seat opposite Benda. He was breathing heavily.
What meaning can be attached to the preliminary questions and answers
that invariably accompany such a meeting after such a long separation?
"How are you? How long are you going to stay in town? You still have the
same old habits of life? Tell me about yourself." What do such questions
mean? They mean virtually nothing. The protagonists thereby simply
remove the rubbish from the channels which have been choked up in the
course of years, and try to build new bridges carrying them over abysses
that must be crossed if the conversation is to be connected and
coherent.
Benda had grown somewhat stout. His face was brownish yellow, about the
colour of leather. The deep wrinkles around his forehead and mouth told
of the hardships he had gone through. His eye was completely changed: it
had the strong, vivacious, and yet quiet appearance of the eye of a
hunter or a peasant.
"You may well imagine that I have already told the story of my
adventures in Africa a hundred times and in the same way," said Benda.
"It has all been written down, and will shortly appear in book form,
where you can read it. It was an unbroken chain of toil and trouble.
Frequently I was as close to death as I am to this wall. I devoured
enough quinine to fill a freight car, and yet it was always the same old
story, fever to-day, to-morrow, for six months in the year. I have, I
fear, ruined my health; I am afraid my old heart will not last much
longer. The eternal vigilance I was obliged to exercise, the incessant
fight for so simple a thing as a path, or for more urgent things such as
food and drink, has told on me. I suffered terribly from the sun; also
from the rain. I had very few of the comforts of life; I was often
forced to sleep on the ground. And there was no one to talk to, no sense
of security."
"And yet," he continued, "I had my reward. When I look back on it all,
there is not an hour that I would care to have wiped from my memory. I
accomplished a great deal. I made some important discoveries, brought
back enough work to keep me busy for years to come, thirty-six boxes of