The Goose Man. Jakob Wassermann
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There were still a third noteworthy section of the table, and that was the so-called Academy. This consisted of a plot of ground, surrounded by an iron fence, and divided up into twelve or fifteen square fields, each of which was painted in fresh green. In the middle of each field there was a wooden peg about two inches high, and to the middle of each peg there was attached a name-plate. From the tops of some of these pegs little banners of green cloth fluttered in the breeze.
The fact is, Herr Carovius had a weakness for association with aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers, the Kramer-Kleets, and the Auffenbergs. Whenever he had succeeded in making the personal acquaintance of the members of any of these families, he went straightway to the Academy and hoisted the appropriate flag.
But, despite all his effort, he had never in the course of time been able to run up more than three flags, and these only for a brief period and without any marked success. Some one had recognised him on the street or spoken to him at the concert, and that was all. The Academy looked, in contradistinction to the jail and the cemetery, quite deserted. Finally he was able to hoist the Auffenberg banner. Herr Carovius felt that the Academy had a great future.
VIII
Kropotkin the painter had once upon a time received an order to make a copy of a Holbein for Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg. He never finished the picture, owing to lack of ability; but he had become acquainted with Baron Eberhard, and years later, having met him quite accidentally, took him to the Paradise, where the infamous brethren were then in the habit of gathering.
Eberhard’s appearance at the Paradise was short-lived; he disappeared in fact as quickly as he had appeared. But this brief space was sufficient for Herr Carovius to become intimately acquainted with him.
The first time he sat at the same table with him he was noticeably excited. His face shone with a mild spiritual glow. His voice was sweet and gentle, his remarks of an unusually agreeable moderation.
He turned the conversation to a discussion of the superiorities of birth, and lauded the distinction of the hereditary classes. He said it was from them only that the people could acquire civic virtue. The brethren scorned his point of view. Herr Carovius came back at them with an annihilating jest.
During the rendition of this hallelujah-solo in praise of the nobility, Eberhard von Auffenberg intrenched himself behind a sullen silence. And though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter the young nobleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was stumped at every turn.
One night, however, the two enjoyed each other’s company on the way home. That is, Carovius never left Eberhard’s side. Annoyed at the failure of his former tactics, he thought he would try his luck in another way: he ridiculed the arrogance of a certain caste which affected to attach less importance to a man like himself than to some jackanapes whose handkerchief was adorned with an embroidered crown.
“What are you, any way, what is your vocation?” asked Eberhard von Auffenberg.
“I don’t do anything,” replied Carovius.
“Nothing at all? That is quite agreeable.”
“Oh, I do work a little at music,” added Herr Carovius, entirely pleased at the curiosity of the Baron.
“Now, you see, that is after all something,” said the Baron. “I for my part am as unmusical as a shot-gun. And if you do not do anything but interest yourself in music, you must have a great deal of money.”
Herr Carovius turned away. The positive dread of being taken for a rich man wrestled with the vain desire to make the young Baron feel that he really was somebody. “I have a little,” he remarked with a titter, “a little.”
“Very well; if you will loan me ten thousand marks, it will give me great pleasure to make you a present of the crown on my handkerchief,” said Eberhard von Auffenberg.
Herr Carovius stopped stock still, and opened his mouth and his eyes: “Baron, you are taking the liberty of jesting with me.” But when Eberhard indicated that he was quite serious, Carovius continued, blank amazement forcing his voice to its highest pitch: “But my dear Sir, your father has an income of half a million. A mere income! The tax receipts show it.”
“Well, I am not talking about my father,” said Eberhard coldly, and once more threw his chin in the air. “It is evidently a part of your heraldic prejudices to feel that you can coax the income of my father into my own pockets.”
They were standing under a gas lamp at the Haller Gate. It was dripping rain, and they had raised their umbrellas. It was perfectly still; it was also late. Not a human being was to be seen anywhere. Carovius looked at the seriously offended young man, the young man looked at Carovius, then grinning a grin of embarrassment, and neither knew how to take the other.
“You are surprised,” said Eberhard, resuming the conversation. “You are surprised, and I don’t blame you. I am a discontented guest in my own skin; that much I can assure you. I am as abortive a creature as ever was born. I inherited far too much that is superfluous, and not nearly enough of the necessities. There are all manner of mysteries about me; but they are on the outside. Within there is nothing but stale, dead air.”
He stared at the ground as though he were talking to himself, and as though he had forgotten that any one was listening, and continued: “Have you ever seen old knights carved in stone in old churches? If you have, you have seen me. I feel as if I were the father of my father, and as if he had had me buried alive, and an evil spirit had turned me to stone, and my hands were lying crossed over my breast and could not move. I grew up with a sister, and I see her as though it were yesterday”—at this point his face took on an expression of fantastic senility—“walking through the hall, proud, dainty, innocent, with roses in her hand. She is married to a captain of cavalry, a fellow who treats his men like Negro slaves, and who never returns the greeting of a civilian unless he is drunk. She had to marry him. I could not prevent it. Somebody forced her into it. And if she is carrying roses now, it is as if a corpse were singing songs.”
Herr Carovius felt most uneasy. He was not accustomed to hearing things like this. Where he lived people called a spade a spade. He pricked up his ears and made a wry face. “It is the way he has been trained that makes him talk like that,” he thought; “it is the result of constantly sitting on gold-embroidered chairs and seeing nothing about him but paintings.”
“I am going to sit on such chairs too,” he was happy to think, “and I shall see the paintings, too.” He pictured himself between the Baron and the Baroness, marching up to the portals of the castle, flanked on either side by a row of liveried servants, the nervous masses catching sight of the splendour as well as they might. The rear of this procession was being brought up by the young Baron, who had returned home as the penitent Prodigal Son.
“One must have a feeling of personal security,” remarked Carovius. He wondered whether the Baron had reached his majority. Eberhard replied that he had just completed his twenty-first year, and that certain things had made him feel that it would be wise to live independent of his family and to renounce his claims to all family rights for the time being. What he really had in mind was the desire to avoid, so far as humanly possible, association with all professional money-lenders.
Herr Carovius felt that this was an extremely serious case. He claimed moreover to understand it perfectly and to be ready for anything, but insisted that nothing must be withheld, that he must be given undiluted wine. He made this remark just as if he were holding a