The Goose Man
small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To
temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying,
he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he
simply stayed away.
XI
His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the
ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to
eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.
Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to
fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long
overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in
which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius
Street were taking part.
In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the
barracks, was examined--and rejected because of a hollow chest.
At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the
hangman's bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were
drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic
countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a
countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from
it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped
in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably
inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a
fresh, well-ordered creation.
As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was
diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now
not much larger than the facade of a church and what wrath remained
seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman passed by,
carrying apples in her apron. He trembled at the smell of them; but he
did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her;
he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not
much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.
The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were
chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through
Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement.
There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door
jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella.
Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have
grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within
out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the
earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the
street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.
The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the
mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile
playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being
far removed from death and equally far removed from life--all this
caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire
future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without
a moment's hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.
Within he found a young man whom the caster addressed most respectfully
as Dr. Benda, and who was about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being
shown a number of successful casts of a figure entitled "The Fountain of
Virtue." It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel
and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an
unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the
mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and
named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived
customer, concluded at once that the price, ten marks, would be more
than he could afford, and turned again to Dr. Benda, so that Daniel
might have time to make up his mind.
The two conversed for quite a while. When the caster finally turned
around, he was not a little surprised to see that Daniel was still
standing at the counter. He stood there in fact with half closed eyes,
his left hand lying on the face of the mask. The caster exchanged a
somewhat dazed glance with Dr. Benda, who, in a moment of forewarning
sympathy, grasped the situation perfectly in which the stranger found
himself. Dr. Benda somehow understood, owing to his instinct for
appreciation of unusual predicaments, the man's poverty, his isolation,
and even the ardour of his wish. Subduing as well as he might the
feeling of ordinary reserve, he stepped up to Daniel, and said to him
calmly, quietly, seriously, and without the slightest trace of
condescension: "If you will permit me to advance you the money for the
mask, you will do me a substantial favor."
Daniel gritted his teeth--just a little. His face turned to a greenish
hue. But the face of his would-be friend, schooled in affairs of the
spirit, showed a winning trace of human kindness. It conquered Daniel;
it made him gentle. He submitted. Dr. Benda laid the money for the mask
on the counter, and Daniel was as silent as the tomb.
When they left the shop, Daniel held the mask under his arm so tightly
that the paper wrapping was crushed, if the mask itself was not. The sad
state of his clothing and his haggard appearance in general struck Dr.
Benda at once and forcibly. He needed to ask but a few well chosen
questions to get at the underlying cause of this misery, physical and
spiritual, in human form. He pretended that he had not lunched and
invited Daniel to be his guest at the inn at the sign of the Grape.
Daniel felt that his soul had suddenly been unlocked by a magic key. At
last--he had ears and could hear, eyes and could see. It seemed to him
that he had come up to earth from out of some lightless, subterranean
cavern. And when they separated he had a friend.
THE NERO OF TO-DAY
I
The spectacle of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the
roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr
Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to
associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human
existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he
preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had
enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable.
In these moods he would venture the hardiest of assertions, not merely
in the field of eroticism, but against the government and divine
providence as well.
And yet, when he trippled home with mincing steps, there was in his face
an expression of cowardly, petty smirking. It was the sign of his inner
return to virtuous living; for his night was not as his day. The one
belied the other.
He had a quite respectable income; the house in which he lived was his
own private property. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the
sights of the town; it was certainly one of the oldest and gloomiest
buildings in that part of the country. An especially attractive feature
of it was the smart and graceful bay-window. Above the beautifully
arched outer door there was a patrician coat-of-arms, consisting of two
crossed spears with a helmet above. This was chiselled into the stone.
In the narrow court was a draw-well literally set in a frame of moss.
Each floor of the house had its own gallery, richly supplied with the
most artistic of carvings. The stairway was spacious; the tread of the
steps was broad, the elevation slight; there were four landings. It
symbolised in truth the leisurely, comfortable tarrying of centuries
gone before and now a matter of easy memory only.
Often in the nighttime, Herr Carovius recognised in the distance the
massive figure of his brother-in-law, Andreas Doederlein, the professor
of music. Not wishing to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the
street corner, until the light from Doederlein's study assured him that
the professor was at home. On other occasions he would come in contact
with the occupant of the second floor, Dr. Friedrich Benda. When these
two came together, there was invariably a competitive tipping of hats
and passing of compliments. Each wished to outdo the other in matters of
courtesy. Neither was willing to take precedence over the other. The
polished civility of the young man made an even greater degree of pretty
behaviour on the part of Herr Carovius imperative, with the result that
his excessive refinement of manners made him appear awkward, while his
embarrassment made coherent speech difficult and at times impossible.
When however he came alone, he would take the huge key from his pocket,
unlock the door, light a candle, hold it high above his head, and spy
into every nook and cranny of the barn-like hall before entering his
apartment on the ground floor.
II
Herr Carovius was a regular customer at the Crocodile Inn; a table was
always reserved for him. Around it there assembled every noon the
following companions: Solicitor of the Treasury Korn, assistant
magistrate Hesselberger, assistant postmaster Kitzler, apothecary
Pflaum, jeweller Gruendlich, and baker Degen. Judge Kleinlein also joined
them occasionally as a guest of honour.
They gossiped about their neighbours, their acquaintances, their
friends, and their colleagues. What they said ran the whole gamut of
human emotions from an innocent anecdote up to venomous calumny. Not a
single event was immune from malicious backstairs comment. Reputations
were sullied without discrimination; objections were taken to the
conduct of every living soul; every family was shown to have its
skeleton in the closet.
When the luncheon was finished, the men all withdrew and went about
their business, with the exception of Herr Carovius. He remained to read
the papers. For him it was one of the most important hours of the day.
Having feasted his ears with friends in private, he now turned to a
study of the follies, transgressions, and tragedies that make up
everyday life.
He read three papers every day: one was a local sheet, one a great
Berlin daily, and the third a paper published in Hamburg. He never
deviated; it was these three, week in and week out. And he read them
from beginning to end; politics, special articles, and advertisements
were of equal concern to him. In this way he familiarised himself with
the advance of civilisation, the changes civic life was undergoing, and
the general status of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat.
Nothing escaped him. He was as much interested in the murder of a
peasant in a Pommeranian village as he was in the loss of a pearl
necklace on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. He read with equal
concentration of the sinking of a steamer in the South Sea and the
wedding of a member of the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey. He could
work up just as much enthusiasm over the latest fashions as he could
over the massacring of enslaved Armenians by the Turks. If he read with
care and reflection of the death of a leading citizen, he pursued the
same course with regard to the reprehending of a relatively harmless
vagabond.
It is only fair to remark, however, that his real sympathy was with
those events that have to be entered on the calamitous side of life's
ledger. This was due to a bizarre kink in his philosophy: he studied the
world primarily from the point of view of its wars, earthquakes, floods,
hailstorms, cyclones, and public and private tragedies in the lives of
men. Happy and reassuring events, such as the birth of a healthy child,
the conferring of an order of distinction, heroic deeds, the winning of