The Goose Man
impossible.
In order to get him to talk more freely, Benda remarked that he had not
heard of the death of Gertrude and Eleanore until his return. He said he
was terribly pained to hear of it, and, try as he might, he could not
help but brood over it. But he had no thought of persuading Daniel to
give him the mournful details. He merely wished to convince himself that
Daniel had become master of the anguish he had gone through,--master of
it at least inwardly.
Instead of making a direct and logical reply, Daniel said with a
twitching of his lips: "Yes, I know, you have been here for quite a
while already. Inwardly I was surprised at your silence. But it is not
easy to start up a renewed friendship with such a problematic creature
as I am."
"You know you are wrong when you say that," responded Benda calmly, "and
therefore I refuse to explain my long waiting. You never were
problematic to me, nor are you now. I find you at this moment just as
true and whole as you always were, despite the fact that you avoid me,
crouch before me, barricade yourself against me."
Daniel's breast heaved as if in the throes of a convulsion. He said
falteringly: "First let that old confidence return and grow. I must
first become accustomed to the thought that there is a man near me who
feels with me, sympathises with me, understands me. To be sure, you want
me to talk. But I cannot talk, at least not of those things about which
you would like to hear. I am afraid: I shudder at the thought; I have
forgotten how; words mock me, make me feel ashamed. Even when I have
good dreams, I personally am as happily and blessedly silent in them as
the beast of the field. I shudder at the thought of reaching down into
my soul and pulling out old, rusty things and showing them to
you--mouldy fruit, slag, junk--showing them to you, you who knew me when
all within me was crystal."
He fixed his eyes on the clouds and then continued: "But there is
probably another means, Friedrich. Look, friend, look! It was always
your affair to look, to behold. Look, but see to it that you do not make
me writhe before you like a worm in the dust! And when you have
looked--wisdom needs only one spoken word for ten that are unspoken.
This one word you will surely draw from me."
Benda, deeply moved, remained silent: "Is it the fault of a woman?" he
asked gently, as they crossed the drawbridge and entered the desolate
old door leading to the castle.
"The fault of a woman? No! Not really the fault of a woman. It is rather
the fault of a man--my fault. Many a fate reaches the decisive point in
happiness, many not until coloured with guilt. And guilt is bitter. The
fault of a woman!" he repeated, in a voice that threw off a gruesome
echo in the vaulted arch of the gateway to the castle. "There is to be
sure a woman there; and when one has anything to do with her, he finds
himself with nothing left but his eyes for weeping."
They left the gateway. Benda laid one hand on Daniel's shoulder, and
pointed in silence at the sky with the other. There were no stars to be
seen; nothing but clouds. Benda however had the stars in mind. Daniel
understood his gesture. His eyelids closed; around his mouth there was
an expression of vehement grief.
II
Benda was convinced, not merely that one great misfortune had already
taken place, but that a still greater was in the making.
Whenever he thought of Dorothea, the picture that came to his mind was
one that filled him with fear. And yet, he thought, she must have some
remarkable traits, otherwise Daniel would never have chosen her as his
life companion. He wanted to meet her.
He had Daniel invite him in to tea. He called one evening early in the
afternoon.
She received him with expressions of ostentatious joy. She said she
could hardly wait until he came, for there was nothing in the world that
made such an impression on her as a man who had really run great risks,
who had placed his very life at stake. She could not become tired of
asking him questions. At each of his laconic replies she would shake her
head with astonishment. Then she rested her elbows on her knees, placed
her head in her hands, bent over and stared at him as though he were
some kind of prodigy--or monster.
She asked him whether he had been among cannibals, whether he had shot
any savages, whether he had hunted lions, and whether it was really true
that every Negro chieftain had hundreds of wives. When she asked this
question she made an insidious face, and remarked that Europeans would
do the same thing if the law allowed.
Thereupon she said that she could not recall having seen him, when still
a child, in her father's house, and she was surprised at this, for he
had such a striking personality. She devoured him with her eyes; they
began to burn as they always did when she wanted to make some kind of
human capture, and blind greed came over her. She unbent; she spoke in
her very sweetest voice; in her laugh and her smile there was, in fact,
something irresistible, something like that trait we notice in good,
confiding, but at times obstinate children.
But she noticed that this man studied her, not as if she were a young
married woman who were trying to please him and gain his sympathy,
rather as a curious variety of the human species. There was something in
his face that made her tremble with irritation, and all of a sudden her
eyes were filled with hate and distrust.
Benda felt sorry for her. This everlasting attempt to make a seductive
gesture, this fishing for words that would convey a double meaning, this
self-betrayal, this excitement about nothing, made him feel sad.
Dorothea did not seem to him a bad woman. Whatever else she might be
accused of, it did not seem to him that she was guilty of downright
immoral practices. He felt that she was merely misguided, poisoned, a
phantom and a fool.
His mind went back to certain Ethiopian women in the very heart of
Africa; he thought of their noble walk, the proud restfulness of their
features, their chaste nudeness, and their inseparability from the earth
and the air.
He nevertheless understood his friend: the musician could not help but
succumb to the charms of the phantom; the lonely man sought the least
lonely of all human beings.
As he was coming to this conclusion, Daniel entered the room. He greeted
Benda, and said to Dorothea: "There is a girl outside who says she has
some ostrich feathers for you. Did you order any feathers?"
"Oh, yes," replied Dorothea hastily, "it is a present from my friend,
Emmy Buettinger."
"Who's she?"
"You don't know her? Why, she is the sister of Frau Feistelmann. You
must help me," she said, turning to Benda, "for you must know all about
this kind of things. There where you have been ostriches must be as
thick as chickens here at home." Laughing, she went out, and returned in
due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident
delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them
by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror,
and looked at herself with an intoxicated mien.
In this mien there was something so extraordinary, indeed uncanny, that
Benda could not help but cast a horrified glance at Daniel.
"This is the first time I ever knew what a mirror was," he said to
himself.
III
That evening Daniel visited Benda in his home. Benda showed him some
armour and implements he had brought back with him from Africa. In
explaining some of the more unusual objects, he described at length the
customs of the African blacks.
Then he was seized with a headache, sat down in his easy chair, and was
silent for a long while. He suddenly looked like an old man. The ravages
his health had suffered while in the tropics became visible.
"Did you ever see Dorothea's mother?" he asked, by way of breaking the
long silence.
Daniel shook his head: "It is said that she is vegetating, a mere shadow
of her former self, in some kind of an institution in Erlangen," he
replied.
"I have been told that neither Andreas Doederlein nor his daughter has
ever, in all these years, taken the slightest interest in the
unfortunate woman," continued Benda. "Well, as to Andreas Doederlein, I
have always known what to expect of him."
Daniel looked up. "You hinted once that Doederlein was guilty of
reprehensible conduct with regard to his wife. Do you recall? Is that in
any way connected with Dorothea and her life? Do you care to discuss the
matter?"
"I have no objection whatever to throwing such light on the incident as
I have," replied Benda. "It does have to do with Dorothea, and it
explains, perhaps, some things about her. That is, it is possible that
her character is in part due to the kind of father she grew up under and
the kind of mother she lost when a mere child. It is strange the way
these things work out: I am myself, in a way, interwoven with your own
fate."
He was silent for a while; memories were rushing to his mind. Then he
began: "If you had ever known Marguerite Doederlein, she would have been
just as unforgettable to you as she is to me. She and Eleanore--those
were the two really musical women I have known in my life. They were
both all nature, all soul. Marguerite's youth was a prison; her brother
Carovius was the jailer. When she married Doederlein, she somehow fancied
she would escape from that prison, but she merely exchanged one for the
other. And yet she hardly knew how it all came about. She accepted
everything just as it came to her with unwavering fidelity and
gentleness. Her soul remained unlacerated, unembittered."
He rested his head on his hand; his voice became gentler. "We loved one
another before we had ever spoken a word to each other. We met each
other a few times on the street, once in a while in the park; and a
number of times she stole up to me in the theatre. I was not reserved: I
offered her my life, but she always insisted that she could not live
without her child and be happy. I respected her feelings and restrained
my own. For a while things went on in this way. We tortured ourselves,
practised resignation, but were drawn together again, and then Doederlein
suddenly began to be suspicious. Whether his suspicion was due to
whisperings or to what he himself had at some time seen his wife do--it
was impossible for her to play the hypocrite--I really do not know. At
any rate he began to abuse her in the most perfidious manner. He tried
to disturb her conscience. One night he went to her bed with a crucifix
in his hand, and made her swear, swear on the life of her child, that
she would never deceive him. He used all manner of threats and unctuous
fustian. She took the oath."
"Yes, my friend, she took the oath. And this oath seemed to her much
more solemn and serious than the oath she had taken at the altar the day
they were married. I knew nothing about it; she kept out of my sight. I
could not endure it. One day she came to me again to say good-bye. There
followed a moment when human strength was no longer of avail, and human
deliberation the emptiest of words. The fatal situation developed. The
delicately moulded woman succumbed to a sense of guilt; her heart grew
irresponsive to feelings, her mind dark. She was stricken with the
delusion that her child was slowly dying in her arms, and one day she
collapsed completely. The rest is known."
Benda got up, went over to the window, and looked out into the darkness.
Daniel felt as if a rope were being tightened about his neck. He too got
up, murmured a farewell, and left.
IV
He had reached the Behaim monument when he began to walk more slowly. A