The Goose Man
the street. The jet of water that spurts from him is like fate: it flows
and collects in the basin. Eternal wisdom, he feels, is streaming up to
him from the fountain below; each hour becomes a century. However men
may be constituted, he is seized with a supernatural feeling when he
looks into their eyes. In all of their eyes there is the same fire, the
same anxiety and the same prayer; the same loneliness, the same life,
the same death. In all of them he sees the soul of God.
He himself no longer feels his loneliness; he feels that he has been
distributed among men. His hate has gone, dispelled like so much smoke.
The tones he hears now come rushing up from the great fountain; and this
fountain is fed from the blood of all those he sees on the market place.
Water is something different now: "It washes clean man's very soul, and
makes it like an angel, whole."
Noon came, and then evening: a day of creation. And when evening came, a
mist settled over the city, and Daniel came down from his high place at
the fountain, set the geese carefully to one side, and went home. He
arrived at the vestibule; he stood in the door of the room looking out
on the court. His eyes beheld a wonderful sight.
The Goose Man was sitting playing with Agnes and little Gottfried. He
had cut silhouettes from bright coloured paper and made them stand up on
the table by bending back the edge of the paper. There he sat, pushing
these figures into each other, and making such droll remarks that Agnes,
who had never in her life really laughed, laughed now with all her
heart, and like the child that she in truth still was.
Little Gottfried could only prattle and clap his hands. The Goose Man
had placed him on the table. Whenever he made a false or awkward move,
the Goose Man would set him right. He seemed to be especially skilled at
handling and amusing children.
When Daniel came in, the Goose Man got up and went over to him, greeted
him, and said in a kindly, confidential tone: "Are you back so soon? We
have had such a nice time!"
In the room, however, there was the same haze that had settled down over
the city when Daniel left the fountain. Agnes and Gottfried were seized
with a terrible fear. The boy began to cry; Agnes threw her arms around
him and cried too.
Daniel went up to them, and said: "Don't cry! I'm with you. You don't
need to cry any more!"
He sat down on the same seat on which the Goose Man had been sitting,
looked at the tiny paper figures, and, smiling, continued the game the
Goose Man had been playing with them.
Gottfried became quiet and Agnes happy.
"Good-night!" cried the Goose Man, "now I am again myself, and you are
you."
He nodded kindly and disappeared.
VI
That same evening six of Daniel's pupils came in. They had heard that he
had been removed from his position at the conservatory.
It was not a mere rumour. Andreas Doederlein had had him discharged. He
was also relieved of his post as organist at St. AEgydius's. The scandal
with which he had been associated, and which was by this time known to
the entire city, had turned the church authorities against him.
The six pupils came into his room where he was playing with his
children. One of them, who had been chosen as their spokesman, told him
that they had made up their minds not to leave him; they were anxious to
have him continue the instruction he had been giving them.
They were clever, vivacious young chaps. In their eyes was an enthusiasm
that had not yet been dimmed either by cowardice or conceit.
"I am not going to remain in the city," said Daniel. "I am planning to
return to my native Eschenbach."
The pupils looked at each other. Thereupon the speaker remarked: "We
want to go with you." They all nodded.
Daniel got up and shook hands with each one of them.
Two days later, Daniel's furniture and household belongings had all been
packed. Benda came to say good-bye: his work, his great duty was calling
him.
At first Benda could hardly realise that Daniel was yet to live an
active life; that there was still a whole life in him; that his life was
not merely the debris of human existence, the ruins of a heart. But it
was true.
There was about Daniel the expression, the bearing of a man who had been
liberated, unchained. No one could help but notice it. Though more
reticent and laconic than in former days, his eyes had taken on a new
splendour, a renewed brilliancy and clarity; they were at once serious
and cheerful. His mood had become milder, his face more peaceful.
The friends shook hands. Benda then left the room slowly, went down the
steps slowly, and once out on the street he walked along slowly: he felt
so small, so strangely unimportant.
VII
Daniel returned to Eschenbach, and moved into the house of his parents.
His pupils took rooms with the residents of the village.
He was regarded by the natives as a peculiar individual. They smiled
when they spoke of him, or when they saw him passing through the streets
absorbed in his own thoughts. But it was not a malicious smile. If there
was the faintest tinge of ridicule in it at first, it soon gave way to a
vague feeling of pride.
He gained a mysterious influence over people with whom he came in
contact; many sought his advice when in trouble. His pupils especially
adored him. He had the gift of holding their attention, of carrying them
along. The means he employed were the very simplest: his splendid,
cheerful personality, the harmony between what he said and what he did,
his earnestness, his humanness, his resignation to the cause that lay
close to his heart, and his own belief in this cause--those were the
means through which and by which he gained a mysterious influence over
those with whom he came in touch.
He became a famous teacher; the number of pupils who wished to study
under him increased from year to year. But he admitted very few of them
to his classes. He took only the best; and the certainty with which he
made his selections and differentiated was wellnigh infallible.
No inducements of any kind could persuade him to leave the isolated
place where he had elected to live.
He was almost always in a good humour; he was never distracted; and the
preciseness and sharpness with which he observed whatever took place was
remarkable. The one thing that could throw him into a rage was to see
some one abuse a dumb beast. Once he got into trouble with a teamster
who was beating his skinny old jade in order to make it pull a load that
was far in excess of its strength. The boys on the street made fun of
him; the people laughed with considerable satisfaction, and said: "Ah,
the professor: he's a bit off."
Agnes kept house for him; she was most faithful in looking out for his
wants. When he would leave the house, she would bring him his hat and
walking stick. Every evening before she went to sleep, he would come in
to her and kiss her on the forehead. It was rare that they spoke with
each other, but there was a secret agreement, a peaceful harmony,
between them.
Gottfried grew up to be a strong, healthy boy. He had Daniel's physique
and Eleanore's eyes. Yes, they were the eyes with that blue fire; and
they had Eleanore's elfin-like chastity and her hatred of all that is
false and simulated. Daniel saw in this a freak of nature of the
profoundest significance. All the laws of blood seemed unsubstantial and
shadowy. His feelings often wandered between gratitude and astonishment.
Of Dorothea he heard one day that she was making her living as a
violinist in a woman's orchestra. He made some inquiries and traced her
as far as Berlin. There he lost her. A few years later he was told that
she had become the mistress of a wealthy country gentleman in Bohemia,
and was driving about in an automobile on the Riviera.
He was also informed of the death of Herr Carovius. His last hours were
said to have been very hard: he had kept crying out, "My flute, give me
my flute!"
VIII
In August, 1909, Daniel's pupils celebrated the fiftieth birthday of
their master. They made him a great number of presents, and gave him a
dinner in the inn at the Sign of the Ox.
One of his pupils, an extremely handsome young fellow for whose future
Daniel had the highest of hopes, presented him with a huge bouquet of
orange lilies, wild natives of the woods around Eschenbach. He had
gathered them himself, and arranged them in a costly vase.
The menu at the dinner was quite frugal; the wine was Franconian country
wine. During the dinner, Daniel rose, took his glass in his hand, and,
with a far-away look in his eyes, said: "I drink to the health and
happiness of a creature who is a stranger to all of you. She grew up
here in Eschenbach. Many years ago she vanished in a most mysterious
way. But I know that she is alive and happy at this hour."
His pupils all raised their glasses. They looked at him, and were deeply
moved by the strength and clarity of his features.
After the dinner he and his pupils went to the old church. He had both
of the large doors opened so that the bright light of day might pour in
unimpeded. Up in the lofty vaults of the nave, where all had been dark
but a moment ago, there was now a milky clearness and cheerfulness.
He went to the organ and began to play. Some men and women who chanced
to be passing by came in and sat down on the benches with the boys. Then
a group of children entered. They tripped timidly through the open
doors, stopped, looked around, and opened their eyes as wide as children
can. Other people came in; for the tones of the organ had penetrated the
humble homes. They looked up at the organ silently and seriously; for
its exalted melodies had, without their being prepared for it, carried
them away from their everyday existence, and lifted them up above its
abject lowliness.
The tones grew louder and louder, until they sounded like the prayer of
a heart overflowing with feeling. As the close of the great hymn drew
on, a little girl was heard weeping from among the uninvited auditors.
It was Agnes who wept. Had life been fully awakened in her? Was love
calling her out into the unknown? Was the life of her mother being
repeated in her?
Children grow up and are seized by their fate.
Toward evening, Daniel took a walk with his nine pupils out over the
meadow. They went quite far. The last song of the birds had died out,
the glow of the sun had turned pale.
The beautiful youth, then walking by Daniel's side, said: "And the work,
Master?"
Daniel merely smiled; his eye roamed over the landscape.
The landscape shows many shades of green. Around the weirs the grass is
higher, so high at times that one can see nothing of the geese but their
beaks. Were it not for their cackling, one might take these beaks for
strangely mobile flowers.
THE END
[Transcriber's Note: The table below lists all corrections applied to
the original text.
p. 007: [normalized] set up as a book-seller -> bookseller
p. 008: the lovely curves of the birdges -> bridges
p. 011: [normalized] he slipt into the Festival Playhouse -> slipped
p. 011: [normalized] acquaintance of Andreas Doeberlein -> Doederlein
p. 011: [normalized] Doeberlein seemed not disinclined -> Doederlein
p. 014: [normalized] little, eight-year old daughter -> eight-year-old
p. 017: [normalized] Theresa said to the working-man -> workingman
p. 018: fiercely red pamphets spread out -> pamphlets
p. 023: [normalized] a room of the brushmaker Hadebusch -> brush-maker
p. 024: Frau Hadesbusch wailed -> Hadebusch
p. 024: [normalized] The old brushmaker poked his head -> brush-maker
p. 046: status of the artistocracy -> aristocracy